


Chresmology

by Kokochan, TheBlueSpanch



Series: Of The Pack [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A Very Distressing Not-Lack Of Shiro, Action/Adventure, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Doom Moose, Dragons, Drama, EXCEPT WHEN IT IS, Galra Tell The Best Bedtime Stories, Ghosts, Humor, Magic, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Prophecy And Why It's Not The Most Useful Gift, Space Battles, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family, Team-Relationship - Freeform, We Light The Match But That's About It, super slow burn, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2019-06-04 20:37:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 279,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15155138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kokochan/pseuds/Kokochan, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBlueSpanch/pseuds/TheBlueSpanch
Summary: Haggar growled and gave the man another zap just for that.  “No man has ever landed a blow like that on me before, nor will one do so ever again.  This one will come to regret that he did not die in the arena soon enough.”“Never... happen,” the man on the table rasped.  “No... matter... what you... do to... me, it's too late.  You've... already... lost.”“What?” Zarkon said ominously.Amazingly, the prisoner smiled.  “You'll... never... regain... control of ... the Lions... now.  Never again.  You had... one chance... both of you.  It's gone... forever.  You're... you're dead.  Your Empire... is doomed.  You just don't know it yet.”





	1. Foreshadowing

**Author's Note:**

> We're baaaaaack! This actually was supposed to be posted a week ago, but work is still very hectic and stupid, and doesn't look to be changing any time soon. That, and we wanted to see what Season 6 would reveal. *laughs* Man, that Canon Divergent tag keeps getting more and more obvious...

Part 4: Chresmology

 

Chapter 1: Foreshadowing

 

From the familiar vantage point of his throne, Zarkon observed his Court while one of his secretaries brought him up to speed on recent events. None of the various generals or dignitaries were missing despite his long absence, which was a good sign. Nobody had been foolish enough to entertain ambitions, and Haggar had not had to thin the ranks. There was even an addition; Pendrash had a new aide following him around, a rather self-effacing young man who watched and listened to everything and said nothing at all. All of them seemed genuinely relieved to have him back; Haggar must have kept them in a constant state of existential dread, which he rather approved of. The proper balance of loyalty and fear was delicate and difficult to maintain. One couldn't push them too hard or they would fight back, and too much loyalty was worse in some ways than too little. Haggar had done well to keep the status quo stable and the Empire's enemies at bay while he recovered.

Zarkon shifted, a spark of annoyance flicking alight in his mind. He should have been up and about again no more than a week or two after his wounding. That she had not isolated the cause of his half-year coma in better time was a touch disappointing, but understandable when one considered what she'd been up against. There was only so much that even she could do.

Of greater disappointment to him right now was his son and current Heir. An empty title, that, and one that Zarkon viewed with a certain dark amusement. He'd stopped taking it seriously after he'd outlived the tenth Crown Prince roughly nine and a half thousand years ago, although the boys themselves always had high hopes. At best, they were useful tools. At worst... well, they became examples of why it was better to be useful. Lotor had not proven his worth this time, having incurred considerable expense and failure without having anything to show for it. Haggar, on the other hand, had reaped better results for her efforts. Not the best results, but more than adequate all the same. He might want to check up on that, actually...

The secretary faltered in his report when the Emperor heaved himself out of his throne. “Majesty?”

“I will hear the rest of it later,” Zarkon rumbled mildly. “Has Lotor been located?”

“Yes, Majesty, he is at Cleorsh Gamma, recouping his forces.” That was Pendrash, efficient and capable as always. “Do you wish a message sent to him?”

Zarkon drew himself up to his full and impressive height, considering that. “Yes. Send a messenger—Ghamparva, I think, and tell him to come to the Center immediately. I want to speak with him. If he will not come willingly, the Ghamparva are to collect him and bring him back regardless. In chains if necessary. You are all dismissed for an hour; there is something that I wish to see to.”

He watched them go, and then turned and headed down a side passage that led somewhere that few went willingly. The Center had its own stockpile of Quintessence, the best and purest of their harvest, reserved exclusively for his use and Haggar's, and his nerves tingled at the proximity of it as he passed by those rooms. Haggar's scrying chamber was nearby as well, and his senses registered that private space as a field of shifting shadows, glowing with amethyst power. Her private labs were down this passage as well, and few other places in this space station caused more dread among its inhabitants. As well they should; the witch always needed good test subjects, and did not particularly care where they came from. Zarkon alone could pass down this hall in perfect safety, for he had long ago forgotten how to fear.

He was still capable of surprise, however. In one of the labs, a suit of armor lay on one of the exam tables, its very familiarity a shock to the Emperor's jaded senses, and he could not help but walk in to study it. It had been so long... He ran his fingers over the white breastplate with its black chevron, admiring the sleek design, and lifted the helmet in his hands. It wouldn't fit him now, he noticed; he'd grown since he'd last worn this suit, and he wondered: _was I ever really that young?_

Images faded by time and long neglect flickered in his memory, and ghost voices echoed in his ears. He remembered Alfor's audacity and reckless courage, his laughter in the face of certain doom. The other Paladins... what had their names been? He couldn't remember. They'd been as close as his own family, or closer, but he couldn't remember much of them now. No more than he could remember his own parents, or his blood siblings. He could remember the huge, broad shape of the yellow Paladin, and how gentle that giant could be. He remembered the brash humor of the blue one, and how he was forever making passes at the household servants regardless of gender or station. He remembered the tall, slender, and surprisingly strong green Paladin, with her needle-sharp wit and incisive mind, and her willingness to hit both him and Alfor with a table whenever they got into one of their arguments. Never too hard, though. Just enough of a good smack to make them forget their acrimony. Gone, now, gone and forgotten, and he'd killed Alfor himself in the end for his crimes.

Zarkon put the helmet down, the old anger at Alfor's betrayal and the theft of his Lion returning, cold and slow as a glacier, and just as heavy. He looked for his bayard but did not find it within the suit's holsters, and felt some annoyance. He remembered that the fool who had usurped this armor from him had taken it right from his hand in that single moment of confusion, when the Lion had interfered in their battle in the Mindscape, blending the twin dimensions of dream and reality for just one crucial second. _How dare he?_ Zarkon thought angrily. The Lion, whatever else it might be, was a machine, and machines obeyed their masters' commands. How dare he suggest that the black Lion was anything other than a device to be mastered and driven? It was a tool, a thing, an extension of his own power, and by Kuphorosk's left _haplek,_ it belonged to _him._ It belonged to him, and all of the others through it. By what right did some nameless alien steal it and turn it against him? By what right did the Lion itself--

He stopped that thought right there, for that road led to a hole in his heart that could drown him in pain even now. Fury moved in him like magma beneath a volcano, and his claws had left gouges in the metal table from where he had gripped it in his anger. He took a deep breath to calm himself and forced the unaccustomed emotions back into quiescence again. He could admit to himself that there were things in the past that should not have been allowed to happen, words that should never have been spoken, both on his part and that of others. Things that should not have happened had been happening long years before Zarkon himself had been born. He had been a product of his time, and had been forced into actions that still made him uneasy even thousands of years later. There was no going back, however, and no way to mend what had been broken. Not even Haggar could manipulate time. There was only the solid _now,_ and the nebulous future that could be shaped and molded if one knew how. He knew how. It was so easy, sometimes. A word here, an action there, a life spared or taken away. Other times, the fates themselves seemed set in stone, and not even the destruction of whole worlds could divert them. The trick was to learn where those hard places might lie, and use them to one's own advantage...

A scream of agony split the air, only slightly muffled by the heavy doors at the far end of the room. Zarkon smiled. The would-be black Paladin had offended Haggar as much or more so than he had offended him, and she was chastising him for it. That was good. It was known the Empire over that to steal from their Galra overlords drew a life sentence. To steal from the Emperor himself merited much worse. It did not do to let anyone forget that. He turned away from the table and went to observe Haggar's technique.

She'd set wards and aetheric barriers all around the room; the air fairly sparkled with them and symbols of power glowed in long strings of amethyst over every wall and flat surface. There were even a few of the crystalloid forms that Haggar used in major aetheric installations, and in the center of all of that, shackled firmly to a table, was the thief himself. An interesting species, Zarkon mused; color him purple, lengthen and sharpen the teeth, alter the shape of the ears a little, add a skull ridge, change the eye color and perhaps add a layer or two of fur, and he'd be indistinguishable from Galra. Where did they find this creature?

Haggar raised a hand, a ball of crackling dark-amethyst light caged in her fingers. The man on the table bucked against his restraints and screamed again. In pain, yes, but not fear, and not in despair either. “He is proving difficult to break,” Zarkon observed.

Haggar didn't look around. Indeed, she'd probably felt him coming up the passage. “It is only to be expected. Many would call him a hero.”

Zarkon smiled. “I seem to remember a place much like this, many years ago, when someone was attempting to teach me the unwisdom of my ambitions.”

Haggar chuckled darkly. “I remember several. It took me some time to teach you not to walk into every trap that presented itself. A common affliction among heroic types.”

“I learned eventually,” Zarkon murmured. “Where is my bayard, Haggar?”

She sighed and glared at the prisoner. “He left it in the Lion, the fool. It's just as well. Had he taken it into the Mindscape along with the armor, he might have done worse than simply hold you captive.”

“Or strike you.” Zarkon murmured.

Haggar growled and gave the man another zap just for that. “No man has ever landed a blow like that on me before, nor will one do so ever again. This one will come to regret that he did not die in the arena soon enough.”

“Never... happen,” the man on the table rasped. “No... matter... what you... do to... me, it's too late. You've... already... lost.”

“What?” Zarkon said ominously.

Amazingly, the prisoner smiled. “You'll... never... regain... control of ... the Lions... now. Never again. You had... one chance... both of you. It's gone... forever. You're... you're dead. Your Empire... is doomed. You just don't know it yet.”

Zarkon glared at him with narrowed eyes for a long moment. “Haggar, what were you planning to do with this creature?”

“A number of things. Ultimately, he will become a Robeast,” she replied, tightly-controlled rage evident in her voice. “I will set him upon his friends, and he will destroy them.”

Zarkon nodded. “Very good. Leave his mind intact, although take care that he has no control over his actions. I want him to know precisely what he is doing as he tears his friends from the Lions and rips them to bloody shreds with his bare hands. We will then find out where he came from and use him to cleanse his planet of his kind. After that... I am sure that uses may be found for him.”

She struck the prisoner once more with her sizzling ball of energy, eliciting another scream. “It will be done, my Lord.”

 

Keith fidgeted restlessly, trying to keep a grip on his feelings and finding it hard going. All of his emotions were screaming at him to hop into his Lion and fly off in three directions at once, but both he and Red knew better than to run off on a blind search like that. It just rankled incredibly to know that he could not help in this matter. While he might not have any idea of where to look, there was someone aboard who did; his mother had grasped the problem of Shiro's reemergence into the physical plane immediately, and had contacted her colleagues not two minutes after she'd been informed. Kolivan and the rest had been perfectly willing to help, thankfully, but it was a big job. The problem wasn't in finding a single well-hidden lab, Keith thought later as he fiddled with the tools he'd been given, the problem was finding which one out of _hundreds_ of well-hidden labs was the right one. The Blade of Marmora had made it their business over the last few hundred years to find out just where the Emperor's witch might hide a secret project, but the list was as long as Soluk's leg—and dragons had long legs—and that didn't count the thousands of other private labs scattered all over the cosmos. That number leaped into the hundreds of thousands when you counted in the space stations and science ships that the Empire employed. Kolivan and his people were doing their best, but there were limits, and none of their operatives had been able to infiltrate past the official levels of the Center itself since Thace had completed his mission; Keith's uncle had been the only one sneaky enough to get past the public levels after Modhri had wiped their high-security computer core. Keith felt a little amused at that. Modhri had mentioned to him just last night that he'd had several offers from the Order to join their ranks. He'd turned them down, of course; he'd healed well from his time as a lab animal, but he wasn't up to the kind of athletics that the Blade trained their people in. He also had obligations to his wife and adopted family that he was adamant about honoring. In the meantime, Nasty had decided to keep them all busy by teaching them a few of his people's skills, starting with picking locks.

A whoop of triumph distracted him from his maunderings; Lance had finally gotten the lock open. There was also a smack as Nasty gave him a swat across the back of the head. “Don't yell!” the Unilu scolded sharply, “don't ever yell. The whole point of this is to get to the objective without doing anything that's going to get you caught and killed, right? If you pop a lock, just smile— _that_ doesn't make any noise. Well, not on most folks. You next, Hunk.”

Lance groaned and rubbed at the spot where the goblinish little alien had swatted him. “Oh, come on! How come we have to learn this anyway? Everybody's got electronic locks out here, and Keith's got the magic Galra touch with Imperial doors. Pidge, too.”

Nasty sighed and rolled his eyes ceilingward, silently entreating whatever might be listening for patience. “Because, you _clorch_ , you're not always going to have Little Miss and Mister Magic Fingers with you. Secondly, not everybody uses electronic locks. You'd be surprised how many don't. Electronic locks are easy. All you need are a few widgets, and if necessary, the arm off of one of those Sentries, or even a hostage, in a pinch. This takes _skill.”_

“Got it,” Hunk said quietly.

“Already?” Lance yelped; it had taken him ten minutes.

“Sure,” Hunk said with a smile. “I used to build locks as a hobby, remember? There are only so many ways you can use a key. Your turn, Keith.”

Keith eyed the lock carefully and inserted the picks, feeling around carefully at the springs and tumblers. It didn't take him long to get a feel for it, and it popped open with ease a few minutes later. Lance was looking downright pouty now.

“That's good,” Nasty said, “nice technique. You've done this before, haven't you?”

Keith smirked. “Yeah. I grew up on an army base. You get all types there, and some of them are willing to teach little kids how to get extra treats... for a piece of the action. I spent a lot of time smuggling candy bars and little pocket-sized bottles of booze.”

Nasty grinned at him. “Ever get caught at it?”

Keith felt a little nostalgic pride. “Nope. Used to drive the drill sergeants nuts.”

Nasty laughed. “Good! There's hope for you lot yet. Give it a try, Varda, and don't get your fingers stuck in the keyhole this time.”

Pidge stuck her tongue out at him and took her turn at the lock. Unsurprisingly, she had it open in very short order. Allura was next, and Lance looked slightly less grouchy when she took even longer to get the hang of it than he did. Nasty wasn't terribly impressed with her performance.

“Slow as a tar-soaked clazzet,” he chided. “Points for persistence, but the palace guard would have tripped over you twice, then fallen asleep again waiting for you to react to the burglar alarms. Didn't Altean society have a crime rate?”

She flashed him a hard look and then put on her “prim-and-proper-princess” face, which she used whenever she wished to wither a peasant. The Paladins had developed an immunity to it and it bounced right off of Nasty's naturally felonious nature, but she kept trying. “Altean society,” she said in a haughty voice, “was as law-abiding as one could expect, but there were always social deviants and criminals. The Royal Family was expected to be the model upon which the commons should base their behavior--”

“I dunno,” Nasty said dubiously, “Coran's been telling me stories about some of your relatives.”

She sniffed, but unbent enough to smile. In truth, she found their guest to be rather charming, in a riff-raffish sort of way. “I never said that we were good at it. I am, and look where it has gotten me! How do you do this again? I'm usually able to get my mice to unlock things for me.”

Nasty rubbed at his face with one hand. “Oh, gods, the mice. You just keep those little _tekras_ away from me while I'm working, all right? I swear, they'll be the death of me! Here, you hold the picks like this—pay attention, blue boy, you're no better at this than she is. Imagine that on the other side of this lock is a beautiful princess or something.”

Lance tried that, but gave up on it after a moment or two. “Sorry, nope. Every time I try, all I can think of is Allura here, or Loliqua.”

Nasty grinned. “I heard about that. Kind of a shame, right? One lady would laugh herself sick and the other would have you spaced if she found you fiddling with her doors. Royalty, eh? No gratitude.”

“I happen to be right here,” Allura said snippily.

“Yeah. And when's the last time you gave this guy a big hug and kiss for his trouble?” Nasty asked, very reasonably in Lance's opinion. “He did save your hash once or twice. Fair's fair, lady. Sometimes a little affection is worth more than gems. Some gems, anyway. Eyes front, now, and let's do this again.”

They managed to get the hang of that lock, and the combination lock after it, and they were struggling with a booby-trapped version when Coran ambled in. He surveyed their project with a smile and drawled, “Aahhh, yes, and another fine old cadet tradition is upheld. I used to belong to three different safecracker clubs during my own early training, and was quite a popular fellow, you know. Not as a safecracker myself, rather to my own disappointment—never had the knack beyond jimmying the odd door—but as something just as valuable.”

“What's that?” Hunk asked suspiciously.

Coran grinned. “As a live-fire training exercise for pickpockets. I had a special suit that was just about made of pockets, all of them booby-trapped, and I would fill them up with loose change—or candy, some of those young fellows did have a monstrous sweet tooth—and the cadet that could go through all of them without triggering the traps was the winner. I'm pleased to say that I did help to turn out some well-rounded students, although Alfor did make me tone down the voltage a bit. Spoilsport. I think that I may still have that suit somewhere, actually, although I never did get all of the scorchmarks out.”

The Paladins stared at him owlishly, as always unsure of whether or not he was telling the truth. Nasty gave him an evil Unilu grin. “I may have you fetch the thing out for us later. So, what's the occasion? You don't usually show up for class.”

Coran tugged at his mustache. “Just letting you know that we're going to make a quick stop in local space before heading off in search of glory. Planet Omorog, to have a word with that Princess of yours, Lance. It doesn't do to ignore an invitation from a professional Oracle.”

Lance's face lit up at the prospect of visiting Loliqua again. “Hey, yeah, that's right! Loliqua wanted to have a talk with Lizenne. Can we bring the dragons? The kids would get a kick out of the dragons. I sort of promised Fanlen that we'd bring them along.”

Coran shrugged. “We'll have to ask when we get there. Moving those two beasts about is no small matter.”

A few minutes later, they had their answer, and it was an enthusiastic one. Not only were the dragons welcome, but expressly invited along with everyone else.Coran was then directed to an area of private space where the two support ships could be parked without attracting attention—the Winter Palace apparently had a jurisdiction there that even the Galra Governors had learned to respect the sanctity of—and a transport shuttle would be up directly to conduct them all safely down to the Palace.

Zaianne frowned at that. Answering that invitation would leave both ships entirely uncrewed and vulnerable, and while the local Imperial Garrison had been stolen by Lotor's fleet and pirate activity all across the Sector had largely come to a standstill (Pidge put on her most innocent expression when the local Portmaster exclaimed over this), Zaianne was unwilling to leave the Castle. There was always some opportunist, she said, and while the big Hanifor craft could look after itself, the Castle could not. There was also the unspoken fact that if anything untoward happened while her son was on-planet, she would come down with guns blazing. In the end, Hunk gave her one of a pair of holocomms so that she'd be able to telecommute, and Nasty elected to keep her company during the visit. It wasn't that he'd been banned from the planet, he told them, but that there was something in the atmosphere that made Unilu ill; too much xenon, apparently, gave them horrible respiratory problems, and Nasty had no intention of spending a week in the infirmary. Everybody else, however, was eager to make or remake the Princess's acquaintance, and Lance was practically dancing with impatience to see Loliqua and her family again. This didn't take long. The transport shuttle that came up beside the Castle was roomy enough to hold all of them comfortably and fast enough that nobody became claustrophobic, and it landed with barely a bump in the Palace's own private landing zone. Maintained for courier ships, they were told, and no more than a few hundred yards from the Throne to expedite matters.

“Handy,” Modhri observed to the Griona who had come out to greet them. “What happens when a damaged ship blows its drive on the pad?”

“It makes a mess and we spend the rest of the week hosing the scorchmarks off of the walls,” their guide said. “This Palace was built when Saranto cluster-ships were still in widespread use, and the damage-containment systems are very good. We've kept up with the upgrades, and it also helps that the walls here are about thirty _bolsha_ thick and made of kudorium-reinforced duracrete.”

Modhri nodded appreciatively. “Nice.”

To their credit, the household guard didn't panic at the sight of the two dragons, although there were more than a few wide-eyed stares and awed mutters as they went past. They were met at the doors to the throne room by none other than Tollins, who greeted them warmly.

“Lance, boy, how grand to see you again!” he said with an expansive smile. “And here are your fellow Paladins—ah, and you would be the missing member, young lady? Very good. And this would be the rest of the family. A little mixed, but I've seen stranger. My goodness, are those Altean space mice?”

“ _Eeek!”_ Platt said from atop Soluk's shoulders.

“Pleased to meet you, I'm sure,” Tollins replied. “There are a lot of very old children's stories featuring such creatures, you know, but I wasn't aware that any of them had survived. Well done. And the dragons. Quite excellent dragons, withal. Tilla and Soluk, yes? Delighted to meet you. And you would be Coran, and you would be Lizenne and Modhri. You two have quite a reputation, you know. Before I announce you to the Princess, I will ask you to be a little patient with her; we are approaching spawning time, and she finds it rather difficult to move right now, and her attention is prone to wander.”

“Understood,” Allura said, remembering one or two of her own relatives who had been overfond of sweets and pleasurable company. “Shall we proceed?”

“Indeed yes, your Highness. The Princess is very eager to speak with all of you.” Tollins turned to the doors and opened them, waving the guests through with a grand gesture. “Princess, your guests have arrived.”

“Come in, come in, sit and be comfortable!” a motherly voice that made Lance brighten up visibly rang from within. “Pardon my unseemly seating arrangement, but this time of year is always a trial for me.”

As they entered the room, they found themselves looking at one of the more unusual royal seats that they'd ever seen. Loliqua herself was radiant despite that, for all that she was remarkably swollen-looking around the torso and dressed in a simple and rather tentlike smock. The throne itself had been removed entirely, and she was reclining comfortably in a large pool of water set into the center of the room. Low tables and large floor cushions had been set around this feature, and the tables were laden with fragrant refreshments. Loliqua patted her vast flanks and made an exasperated face. “You'd think after more than three hundred broodseasons that I'd be used to it, but it's a great bother every time. Biology, eh?”

Lizenne lowered herself gracefully onto a handy cushion with a wry smile. “You should see some of our breeding imperatives. Ridiculous! Lance, be a dear and introduce us.”

“Yeah, just a tick,” Hunk said, taking a small device out of his pocket and setting it on one table. “Everybody should be in on this. You there, Zaianne?”

The device beeped at his touch and emitted a holoscreen, upon which Zaianne's proud features formed a moment later.  _“I am, although Nasty's hunting silverware at the moment. Ah. Pardon my caution, your Highness, but paranoia is a survival trait in my line of work.”_

Loliqua's gold-threaded eyes flicked back and forth from the screen to Keith in fascination; in some ways, he resembled his mother very clearly. “That is quite all right and very sensible of you. Indeed, I would have been very surprised to see you in person, Blade, for all that our Imperial Authorities are very distracted at the moment. We've a new Governor, and he is far more interested his own people's affairs than in a lot of boring, well-behaved amphibians and equally uninteresting tree-dwellers. Lance, dear, kindly introduce me to these remarkable people.”

Lance handled this task with remarkable grace, at which point the Princess demanded that they tell her of everything that they'd been up to during the time since she'd last seen them. Pidge was also required to tell her own tale, a story that took over an hour and several refills of the snack platters. At the end of it, Loliqua sat there staring at them in open astonishment, her mind once again visibly spinning with the future ramifications of their actions.

“Ye Gods,” she murmured, rubbing at her head. “Never let it be said that you are not true Heroes. No wonder the newsnets have been in such a froth of excitement! What a gift you have given Halidex! And to have coaxed the _Night Terror_ into an alliance... if the rest of the Hoshinthra come out of hiding, things shall become very noisy indeed! I have heard that the Galran Crown Prince has been summoned back to the Center to explain his recent exploits to his father, which he may or may not come away intact from. If he does escape unflattened, he may well become a far more deadly enemy than before... which makes a recent Vision I have had rather clearer in my mind, come to think of it. Oh, dear. And a number of others.”

“What have you Seen?” Coran asked curiously.

“Will we get Shiro back?” Keith blurted.

“Is he going to be okay?” Pidge demanded.

“Are we going to lose anyone else?” Hunk asked grimly.

“How are we going to defeat Lotor?” Allura asked urgently.

“Will we ever get that ice-cream beach party?” Lance asked.

“Children,” Modhri chided gently, and the Paladins shut up with a contrite, “Sorry, Uncle Modhri,” that made Loliqua cast a look of amused appraisal at him.

“I am not sure that I have answers to those questions,” Loliqua said, sipping at her tea. “Even the most complete of prophecies must be treated as a hint book rather than a road map; the glimpses that I do see and understand tend to be fragmentary, unconnected, and often misleading. Causality, I am afraid, is prone to making puns and playing tricks upon the unwary. Moreover, I might receive a clue that _looks_ impressive, but might be massively unimportant. Another Vision might be as simple as 'please-and-thank-you', and yet might change the entire course of history. Worse, I often cannot tell which is which, or at what time they will become relevant.”

“ _Tell us what you have Seen, then,”_ Zaianne said, _“and let us interpret what we can.”_

Loliqua hummed thoughtfully, staring for a long moment into her teacup as though it were a repository of cosmic wisdom. “I have Seen battle between Voltron and the Imperial Forces, although I cannot tell whether it was one battle or many. Both sides seemed evenly matched, for you do not fight alone. Hundreds and hundreds of proud ships will follow your banner; if you do not have such allies now, then you had best begin to make them. The pirates are a good start, but you must not leave it at that.”

Allura nodded. “We have a standing invitation from the Ghost Fleet to come and help them free the enslaved worlds in this Sector. It's as good a place to start as any.”

Loliqua saluted her with her teacup. “Indeed. Elikonia alone, even oppressed as they have been, will be a mighty addition to your forces. That's not a Vision, by the way, but simple observation. I'm old enough to remember the sort of influence their Collective used to have in this region, and they will want to pick up where they left off. In several of my Visions, you will have the aid of the Hoshinthra, for good or for ill; you must handle that strange people with great care, or they will destroy what you, Lizenne, hope to preserve.”

Lizenne's face hardened. “I'm aware. I have considerable experience in dealing with vendettas, and I do not come alone to this fight.”

Loliqua held her empty plate out to Lance, who refilled it with dainties and passed it back. “That is a good habit to have. From the fragments I have Seen, I may confidently advise you to resist the temptation to run off on your own. In every single Vision I had where you went solo, young lady, you wound up dead along with your people.”

Lizenne puffed a grim laugh. “That's clear enough, even to me. Ah, well, _Tahe Moq_ is a group discipline, and I should take my cue from that, shouldn't I?”

Modhri gave her a loving smile. “Save your bull-headed independence for when you are a proper Matriarch. Have you any messages for me, your Highness?”

Loliqua cast him another appreciative look. “Not as such. I have the impression that you have already made the greater of the contributions that were required of you, and may rest in a supportive role for the time being; indeed, by doing so, you will give your Lady there a better chance of becoming a Matriarch later on.”

Modhri sighed and sat back in his seat, gazing thoughtfully at the floral murals on the ceiling. “That would have been my little trip to the Center, I think, and possibly my near-death experience earlier on in the Center's arena. Painful as they were, I do not regret them.”

Hunk patted his shoulder. “You're doing a lot by just hanging around and helping us out, man. Thanks, by the way. Do I get a prophecy too, Princess?”

Loliqua's dark eyes scanned them all, from dragons to mice and back again. “All of you do, although I suspect that they will not make sense for some time. I have Seen you, Hunk, standing atop a mountain of broken atrocities with a variety of vengeances in your mind. You must choose one, and one only, and it must be the right one, for that will cause a critical weakness in the armor of your foe.”

“Wow,” Hunk said. “Um... which one's the right one?”

“Haven't the foggiest idea,” Loliqua shrugged. “My people aren't exactly of a warrior type, and I myself am entirely incapable of such things. You needn't worry too much; you have excellent judgment. Keith?”

“Yes?” Keith asked tensely.

“You I have Seen in battle,” Loliqua said gravely, “there will be many foes for you to face, but the greatest of them all will have power beyond your imagining. I have Seen it shatter the shield of Voltron, and I have Seen it break the sword as well. You must not despair, but turn your eyes to the stars, where, if all else goes properly, you will find help. Lance.”

“Yes?” Lance asked.

“You must study what you have already been taught, and study it well. The lives that you hold most dear depend upon that, for you will use that knowledge to do the impossible. The stuff of life itself will flow at your will, and you must take care not to spill so much as a drop, for each drop is precious. Pidge.”

Pidge looked up with a gulp, not trusting herself to speak; Loliqua should have looked comical, a great swollen toad in a sunken bath, but there was nothing amusing about her now. This was an Oracle at work, and she was all business.

“You have learned a very great deal from those around you, and from your own experimentation. You have seen the place where the division between mechanism and living tissue no longer matters. You have found the key to the lock. In the heat of the moment you will find the pivot point between survival and oblivion, and you must use what you are given to turn the course of events to the correct direction. It will not be easy, but you will have help. Allura.”

“Yes?” Allura squeaked nervously.

Loliqua turned a thoughtful look upon the Altean. “I have not Seen you in the great battle. Instead, I have Seen you dancing at the hub of the wheels of power, both figuratively and literally. Through your heart shall you channel the great forces that shape futures; you shall clarify and enhance them, and pass them on to those who will use them well. I See you at many diplomatic meetings, young lady. You did well with the Halidexans. You must endeavor to do well with the others whom you will meet soon. You must do your utmost a little time later, when the very blood of creation will spin around you, even as galaxies spin around their own hubs. To tell you the truth, that one is a little muddled. I am not quite sure which is metaphor and which is a simple glance at some possible future.”

“I will do my best regardless,” Allura promised.

Loliqua nodded. “And that is all that may be asked of you. Coran.”

“Oh, I get one, too?” Coran said with a sparkle in his eye and a tug on his mustache. “Will it be heroic?”

She smiled at him. “Everything you have done has been heroic. You must be more heroic still, for there will come a time that you will be forced to make a sacrifice. It will cause you pain, but it will be necessary, for it will turn events down certain, very necessary paths. Your future actions may well be a deciding factor in the fate of the Empire.”

“Goodness,” Coran murmured. “That might even be worth a statue in my honor. Not a posthumous one, I hope.”

“We shall see.” Loliqua shifted in her bath, causing waves that slapped at the sides of the pool. “You will be the only person in this group to act alone when things come to a head, but your own training and rather checkered past has prepared you well for it. Just recall that certain things hold true, regardless of the years. As for you two--”

Tilla and Soluk observed her with attentive azure eyes; Soluk rumbled faintly.

Loliqua observed them silently for a moment, then shook her head. “I have Seen things that I have difficulty understanding. I have Seen you running through tall yellow grasses with a great many of your own kind. I have Heard a song that is not a song. I have Seen a disc made of the very stuff of eternity, and all the worlds and the universe itself will align along that tiny object's radius for one crucial moment.”

Tilla's spiky brows pinched into an odd frown, and she rattled and chirped something at Soluk, who rumbled and churred back. Everyone looked at Lizenne for a translation, but all they got was a shrug. “I don't recognize those terms at all,” she said. “There may not be a translation for them. Continue, if you would, Princess.”

“Of course,” Loliqua said, and focused her dark eyes upon the mice. “All of this Destiny thundering around has a role for you as well, little ones. Be it known that your game with your guest is merely practice. You will have the opportunity later on to steal and hide something rather bigger than a fish knife; it will be large, heavy, and very awkward, but you must not let that discourage you. Indeed, it will be critical. Succeed, and you may well be posing for statues of your own.”

“ _Eeek!”_ the mice chorused staunchly, striking heroic poses.

“ _And me?”_ Zaianne asked quietly, gazing on the assembly with solemn citrine eyes.

Loliqua hummed thoughtfully. “I have Seen that long ago, you failed your son. You yourself are blameless in that, for circumstances forced you from him and your mate; another crime to lay at the feet of the Emperor, that. You still feel guilt, but in time you will absolve that guilt, for you will spend much of yourself to save his life. In doing so, you will save all life.”

“ _At the cost of my own.”_

That was not a question, and Keith glanced anxiously between his mother and the Oracle.

“Perhaps,” Loliqua said. “Not necessarily. I am not sure. Do not rush to throw yourself into the jaws of death, Zaianne, but similarly do not hesitate to do what must be done. Do not lose sight of the fact that you are not alone; keep this strange kindred of yours within sight, and you stand a good chance of greeting your grandchildren.”

Zaianne nodded her thanks.  _“That is good advice. Now, if I can just persuade them not to rush into foolish situations again...”_

There was an embarrassed titter from those assembled that made Loliqua laugh. “Impossible, madame, quite impossible! They are all heroes, are they not? Getting into dire situations is what they are  _for._ Lance, dear, I do believe that Fanlen is in that room over there, listening at the keyhole and fairly bursting with impatience to have his turn with you. Do spend a little time in the garden with my children, my friends! There are certain things that I must do now, and will rejoin you in a little time. The fresh air and sunlight will take the edge off of my gloomy pronouncements, anyway. Oh... Lizenne, do stay for a moment, there are some questions that I would like to ask.”

Lizenne gave her the bow of one professional to another. “Certainly, and I've a few queries to put to you in turn. Go on ahead, all of you; I'll be down in a minute.”

 

Allura sat in pensive silence next to Pidge on one of the garden benches, puzzling over the predictions that they had been given. Part of her was aware that her mood was a little out of place despite such portents; the Palace gardens were gorgeous, Loliqua's horde of children were charming, and everyone was having fun but her. The two dragons were currently charging madly along the broad stone paths that snaked among the elegantly-designed water gardens, both of them carrying several whooping riders each. As she watched, Tilla turned off of the path and leaped gaily into one of the ponds, sending up huge sprays of water as she plunged through the shallows. Soluk let out an exasperated _gronk_ and flung himself after her, his passengers howling in excitement and terror as he kicked off of a high bank and landed in the water with a splash that sent spray through a whole bank of second-story windows. Tilla, it seemed, couldn't play any sort of game without being tempted to cheat. Still, they made a magnificent picture, the flying water glinting in the midday sun like curtains of diamonds around them. Hunk had told her of the legendary dragons of his own homeworld, and here and now, she could believe some of them.

Soluk made it across the finish line first through sheer determination and came to a snorting, soggy halt, dripping waterweed and overexcited Omora youngsters from his back and flanks. He turned and gave Tilla a fulminating look and what sounded like a low-voiced scolding for her bad behavior. Tilla merely tossed her head, slurped his face with her broad blue tongue, and splashed back into the pond. Grumbling peevishly, he followed, snorting at the large, gemlike insects that buzzed around the flowers.

A few minutes later, a pair of soggy figures, one tall, one short, but grinning the same unrepentant grin, came squelching out of the pond. Hunk laughed to see them and shouted, “Hey, Lance, auditioning for the newest remake of _The Creature From The Black Lagoon?_ You're a natural for the part!”

Lance paused, standing proudly, his sodden clothing splashed with mud and his dripping hair adorned with small flowering water plants. “You bet your shorts,” he called back cheerfully, “I will be the greatest swamp monster that there has ever been! You guys should join me—come on in, the water's fine!”

Fanlen laughed, pulling a large and confused snail off of Lance's shirt and tossing it back into the water. “Yeah! You can even ride the dragons next, when they've got their breath back. That's really fun!”

Allura looked longingly at the glittering water. When she'd been very small and the Castle still on Altea, she had been in and out of the pond in the palace gardens all the time, and had fond memories of swimming with the fish and throwing fistfuls of mud at whichever governess had drawn the short straw that day. It had taken some effort to civilize the willful little girl that she had been, and, alas, the lessons had stuck. It was beneath the dignity of a royal princess to splash about in the muck like a common marsh-farmer's daughter. _Some days,_ she thought sourly, _it does not pay to be nobly-born._ Lance, on the other hand, was entirely common, and had no problem with getting dirty when it looked like fun. Indeed, he was never happier than when he was being rained on, or when he was up to his chin in pond water. The others did not share his predilections, thankfully.

“Pass, thanks,” Keith said in a glum tone; the lack of predictions concerning Shiro was obviously worrying him. “They're a little too spiky for me without my armor on, and we've already got all the bog monster that we need right here. You're not alone in the swamp, Lance.”

Lance glared at him, but the water was full of laughter; Tilla had found a sandbank near the center of the pond and was now rolling in it, giving her spiny hide a good scratching. Soluk had herded Fanlen's younger siblings back toward the group, and they had found Keith's summation funny. Lance sniffed and acquired a lofty expression. “They are my army of toadly wrath and we will conquer all before us.”

There were cheers from the little princes and princesses, and quite a bit of splashing. Soluk vented an agreeable-sounding _gronk_ of his own that made Pidge grin. “With bonus Jabberwock, if you want one.”

“What's a Jabberwock?” Modhri asked.

Allura giggled. How was she going to answer that without embarrassing everybody, herself included?

Coran humphed and directed a disapproving glance both at her and at the green Paladin. “Well, where I come from, it was a slang term for a certain item of men's underwear, and not the sort for conventional use, either. Oddly enough, it was also an archaic term for a measuring cup in one of the northern baronies. Not the sort of word to bandy about in polite company, anyway. Who's been teaching you such things, young lady?”

Lance's face split open into a big grin, and he splashed ashore with his giggling army of toadly wrath right behind him, their eyes alight with curiosity. “Lewis Carroll, and it's the world's best poem about monster-hunting. _Everybody_ knows it where I come from. Hey, kids, want to hear an awesome poem? It's short, but really good!”

“Yes, please!” Fanlen said, and was echoed by twenty or thirty of his sibs.

Lance struck a dramatic pose, clumps of mud and weed dripping off of him as he did so, and he spake thusly in a sepulchral voice: _“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbel in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe.”_

His tone and stance changed, looking and sounding more like an old man admonishing an adventurous son: _“'Beware the Jabberwock, my son, the jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!'”_

Lance then drew himself up nobly, pulling his bayard out of his pocket with a squelch and raising it on high, much like that aforementioned adventurous young man: _“He took his vorpal sword in hand..._ uh.”

His bayard activated, but became a most unswordly firearm instead. He deactivated it and stuffed it back into his pocket with another squelching noise, evicting an indignant amphibian as he did so. Lance looked around for anything better, but the exquisitely-maintained gardens didn't even offer a stray twig to use. His eyes came to rest on Keith, who was trying not to laugh and hissed urgently, “Keith! Keith, gimme your bayard, quick!”

“Wait, what?” Keith said, jerking away, but not quite quickly enough.

A moment later, Lance grabbed him and hauled his bayard forcibly out of his jacket pocket, giving it that little mental push that had it changing shape. Alas, it merely reformed into a red-plated version of his own weapon. “Huh,” he said, scowling at this result, “I guess they really do shape themselves to fit whoever's got them. Okay, I can work with that. Here, Keith, hold this!”

Before he could react, Lance had crammed the bayard into his hands and got a good grip on his wrists. The bayard obligingly reshaped itself into a sword, and Keith was nearly pulled off of his feet as Lance flourished it—and him—a bit. The blue Paladin was a good bit stronger than he looked.

“As I was saying,” Lance said with an irreverent grin, _“He took his Vorpal sword in hand, long time the manxome foe he sought—so rested he by the Tumtum tree..._ hmm. No Tumtum trees. Hunk, be a tree.”

Hunk, smiling broadly, obligingly stepped up and lifted his arms up and out like branches. Protesting helplessly, Keith was hauled over and leaned up against him.

“ _...and stood awhile in thought.”_ Lance continued dramatically, observing his audience. The kids were enjoying the play, of course; Coran, however, looked like he wanted to explode almost as badly as Keith did. Allura had gone very pink and was giggling. Modhri was watching with unalloyed delight, and Pidge was laughing her ass off. A good start, he thought. “Come on, Keith, look thoughtful instead of broody for a change. Even cows manage that.”

“Lance...” Keith growled dangerously, murder dripping off of that one word.

“Yeah, that's good,” Lance said irrepressibly. “Okay, next verse. _'And while in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came!'”_

Soluk shouldered his way up out of the water, whiffling through his nose and making horrible gargling noises. Lance was quite impressed. “Hey, that's really good, Soluk, keep it up! _'One two! One two!'”_ Lance continued, waving Keith and his bayard in Soluk's direction, _“And through and through, the vorpal blade went snicker-snack--!”_

Hunk groaned. “Oh, man, did you have to mention Snickers? I really miss those, you know.”

Lance glared at him. “Hunk, you're a tree. Trees don't whine about snack foods.”

Hunk pouted and patted his belly. “Tumtum trees do.”

“Point,” Lance conceded, “just keep it down, okay? _'He left it dead--”_

Soluk obligingly fell over, rolled onto his back with his legs in the air, and stuck out his tongue in an excellent imitation of very large roadkill.

“ _\--and with its head..._ um...” Lance grabbed one of Soluk's horns, tugged a few times, and gave up. Soluk's head was longer than his torso and probably massed three or four times what he did. “Tell you what,” Lance said thoughtfully, “I'll come back later with a forklift. _'…he came galumphing back.'_ Come on, Keith, galumph with me.”

Keith had had enough. Lance managed to haul him into taking a couple of groin-straining bounds, but the third ended in an explosive  _whuff_ of breath as his elbow dug Lance's navel another inch or so deeper, and the taller boy collapsed wheezing into the mud.

Lance groaned, but would not be deterred. “Dead here, Hunk...” he gasped, “...take over, okay?”

“Sure,” Hunk said, and before Keith could dodge away, Hunk had grabbed him up into a bear hug. _“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”_ Keith found himself half-flung from one side to the other as Hunk danced a couple of lurching steps. _“He chortled in his joy.”_

Keith squawked in protest as he was ferociously cuddled, but was unable to get loose. Hunk patted him on the head. “Come on, man, say the last verse.”

“Hunk, dammit...” Keith growled.

Hunk's eyes grew huge and doelike. “C'mon, Keith, please?”

Keith rolled his eyes and gave in. Hunk at his most waifish was impossible to disappoint. It would be like kicking all the puppies in the world. “All right, all right, fine.  _“'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbel in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe.'_ You can let go of me now.”

Hunk gave him an extra squeeze. “Aw. You sure?”

Keith looked around at the others. Modhri was bent double with mirth. Coran was puffed up with outrage, Pidge had collapsed across Allura's lap and was hooting with laughter, and if Allura blushed any harder, they would have to throw her into the pond to cool her down before she spontaneously combusted. Lance was flat on his back in the mud, chortling along to a chorus of giggles from the Omora kids, and the mice, who had been lurking beneath the garden benches, were dying of squeaky hilarity. Even the dragons were laughing, and Soluk, who was still flat on his back, winked three eyes at him and burbled again. Keith groaned in mortification and buried his face in Hunk's arm. “Maybe not,” he said in a muffled voice.

“ _Bah!”_ Coran snarled, his mustache bristling fearsomely. “I should put you all on garbage duty for using language filthier than even my old drill sergeant could muster, and you call that poetry? The first and last verses alone... I should be washing your mouths out with industrial cleanser, you know. Have you any idea of what they actually mean?”

“Sure,” Pidge gasped, wiping at her eyes and grinning broadly at the furious Altean. “I read the second book, too, _and_ the annotated version. 'Brillig' means four 'o' clock in the afternoon. 'Slithy' means lithe and slimy. A 'tove' is a sort of weasel with a corkscrew-shaped nose, and they were spinning and digging holes in the 'wabe', which is the area of grass around a garden sundial. 'Mimsy' means miserable and flimsy, and a borogrove is a sort of flightless parrot that's thin and shabby-looking, with messy feathers. 'Mome raths' are homegrown, long-eared green pigs, and 'outgrabe' is shouting or screaming. Basically, it translates out to: _'It was four in the afternoon, and the corkscrew weasels were messing up the garden, which upset the ugly birds and made the resident weird pigs complain loudly.'_ It's not our fault that the universe has a dirtier sense of humor than one of our classic authors did.”

Coran deflated. “Oh.”

She sniffed primly. “And besides, where do you get off scolding us for bad language? That song that you sang with Doc at that party on Halidex--”

Coran cringed in embarrassment. “I was drunk.”

“You sure were!” Pidge pulled out her imager and waved it at him. “And you'd better not try to wash our mouths out with soap, pal, or that video goes public.”

Coran let out a horrified squawk that had every bird in the gardens heading for the other side of the palace. “You  _recorded_ that? Give that here, you little--”

Pirate-trained reflexes cut in, and she was up and halfway down the path before Coran could grab her. Coran took off after her, shouting threats and entreaties all the way, leaving everyone else laughing behind him.

 

“I shall have to visit you again, sometime,” Lizenne said as they headed down to the gardens to rejoin their respective kin. “You have been enormously informative, and a magnificent hostess.”

Loliqua, who had settled herself into a sort of water-filled hover-tank in order to comfortably escort her guest down to the gardens, gestured graciously. “As have you, and are a most interesting guest besides. Consider your invitation to be a standing one; I will be glad to see you whenever you should happen to drop by... save for a period of six weeks every year, of course.”

“I will be circumspect,” Lizenne promised. “Perhaps later, if things fall out for the best, I will invite you to my chosen home. I intend to revive the discipline, and perhaps this time we won't attract assassins.”

Loliqua hummed thoughtfully. “I don't travel much, I'm afraid. Affairs of state, you know, and Zampedri is a very long way away from here. Still, I have always wanted to see what a Galra looks like in a proper state of nature, where his heart is the happiest.”

Lizenne chuckled. “Oh, we're a rough and tribal bunch at heart, never fear. Humans, from what little I've gleaned of their culture, are much the same, and Alteans are descended from swamp haunts. If you want a glimpse of it, I suppose that I could invite you into my ship's envirodeck... oh.”

They had just come out into the garden courtyard, and a rather complicated scene met their eyes. Loliqua trilled a delighted laugh, and Lizenne's own rich laughter echoed it. Both dragons were surging like steamships around the deep end of the pond, captained by the mice and crewed by happy crowds of Omora youngsters. Pidge was up a tree, throwing nuts at Coran and casting aspersions upon his ancestry and personal habits; for his part, Coran was trying to shinny up the smooth-barked trunk and kept sliding back down, yelling imprecations all the while. Everyone else was in the shallows, embroiled in a first-class mud fight.

“Or we could simply get a bowl of snacks and watch the fun,” Lizenne said.

Loliqua giggled. “That sounds like a grand idea, and I will offer them the use of the baths and the laundry... in a little while.”

Lizenne nodded and watched fondly as Modhri held Lance down while Allura rubbed a double handful of mud into his hair. “In a little time.”

 


	2. Legend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly shorter chapter today; we apologize. But this was what felt best for the flow of the story, so we went with it.

Chapter 2: Legend

 

It was very late. None of the team had been particularly willing to leave their amusements in the garden pond and it had taken a very great deal of scrubbing to get the mud out of both their clothing and off of their persons, and of course Loliqua had invited them all to dinner. After that, Hunk had disappeared into the Palace kitchens to talk with the cooks, and Fanlen had insisted on giving them a tour. They were all very tired by the time that they returned to the Castle, but a few of them were having trouble getting to sleep. Keith in particular could find no rest in his room; his mind whirled constantly between worries about the future and the possibilities of getting Shiro back. Nothing was certain, nothing at all, and the sheer ambiguity of it all bid fair to drive him mad. Would they get him back in one piece? Would they get him back sane? Would they get him back alive? Would they get him back at all? What had those weird prophecies to do with anything, and how would they be able to tell? His own prediction was reasonably straightforward, but it didn't tell him what he wanted to hear. Hunk, of course, had been quick to reassure him.

“Calm down, Keith,” the yellow Paladin had told him before heading off to add his fistful of new recipes to his collection of cosmic cookbooks. “Remember that Allura's not going to be with us at the great battle, right? _Then who's going to be piloting the black Lion?_ Unless we find another space hero that Black's going to accept pretty soon now, it's going to be Shiro's butt in that seat. We'll get him back, I just know it.”

Keith envied his friend for his optimism, but he wasn't able to share in it. He had lost too much to chance already. His mother first to necessity, his father to undiagnosed congestive heart failure, his uncle to some officer's miscalculation, his other uncle to another miscalculation, Shiro himself—twice—to alien interference, and then his place in school and his entire former life to the Lions. It might have brought him a new home, new purpose, and even a new family, but he simply could not trust the whims of fate not to take it all away from him again, and he knew that nightmares lay in wait for him if he tried to sleep now. Instead, he decided to head down to the training deck to see if he could tire himself out enough not to dream.

He stepped into one of the sparring rooms and was surprised to find that he wasn't alone in his urge for a little late-night exercise; his mother was here, scowling meditatively into the middle distance as she got some weapons practice in. Not with her own blade, he was a little surprised to see, but with Lizenne's bone spear. Her movements were slow and graceful as she thrust, blocked, feinted, and parried, and he knew from personal experience that she was building strength and control; it was actually much harder to run through a routine in slow motion than it was to do so at full speed. He leaned on the doorframe to watch until she came to the end of the set. He could see now what his father had seen all those years ago; purple and furry and yellow-eyed she might have been, but she was battle-poetry in motion and possessed of a unique beauty. His mind strayed, as it had been doing with embarrassing regularity of late, to the sparring match that he and Pidge had fought in the ruins of the pirate Stronghold; Pidge shared some of that beauty, and parts of him sat up and begged whenever he thought about it.

To distract himself from those uneasy thoughts, he turned his eyes to the polished yellow-white length of the spear instead, and reflected upon what he'd been told about such things. It seemed a bit strange, really, that such a primitive object still held power in the minds of a race that was so technologically advanced.

“Khaeth,” his mother murmured, “couldn't sleep?”

“No,” Keith replied, easing into the room and sitting down on the bench by the door. “I've been kind of stressed out lately. Sparring sometimes helps.”

“It does. I'd invite you to spar with me, but not while I'm using this weapon.” Zaianne glared at the spear in her hands and jabbed it viciously at an imaginary foe. “I'll be done in a little time.”

He cocked a puzzled look at her. “Why not?”

“I don't have full control of it yet.” Zaianne spun in a slow, graceful whirl, the spear spinning in one hand to lash forward, backward, and then around in a slash that would have taken the heads off of at least three opponents and killed or seriously injured two more. “My son, I am a swordswoman, trained exclusively in the use of my Marmoran blade. Before Modhri placed this spear in my hands, I had never used this sort of weapon. The closest I had ever come to doing so up to that point was when I was about six years old, and was using an old broomstick to smack one of my brothers.”

Keith scowled. “Really? You sure seemed to know what you were doing when we invaded the Center. You were cutting soldiers and Sentries down like they were grass.”

She shook her head. “Tradition demands that when a woman receives her sister's primary weapon from her man as Modhri gave Lizenne's to me, she must carry it with her at all times so that if the foe presents himself, both women may wreak their vengeance. Even if the abducted sister is dead, she will help to strike him down through that weapon. Very symbolic, and _yes,_ we're a bunch of savages.”

Keith couldn't help but smile at that. “I'm cool with that. So, what's different about this one?”

Zaianne came to the end of her routine and rested the butt of the spear on the floor with a sigh. “Khaeth, I was not allowed to leave this spear behind—not by the dictates of tradition, but by the spear itself. I was not permitted to use my own sword. I was not the warrior in that battle with Sendak—I was the weapon, and the spear the master. This is a bone spear, and it has Power.”

Keith heard the capital “P” clang into place like a blast door, and he remembered what he'd been told in the temple on Boniro. “Mom... does Lizenne really think that Zarkon and Haggar can only be killed by a god? I was told a little about bone spears, but not much more than that.”

There was a series of clicks as Zaianne tapped her claws on the spear's shaft. “I'm not sure. Voltron is close enough to count as a god to some, and those two ancient monsters at the heart of the Empire are among the most dangerous of all creatures. What else were you told about bone spears?”

Keith shrugged. “Just that they were made for seriously tough enemies, and that going after them was a do-or-die kind of thing. And that the spear would turn on its user if he gave up.”

Zaianne gave him a narrow look. “Whoever told you that had his facts straight, then. That would have been Kayell, yes?”

“Yeah.”

Zaianne tapped the butt of the spear on the floor. The sound it made echoed oddly off of the walls, as if the spear were far larger than it really was. “Charlugos are a very strange people, but they don't make mistakes where it comes to religion. Did he tell you the tale of how Kuphorosk obtained the original?”

“Nope.” Keith grinned at her and leaned back against the wall. “Tell me a bedtime story, Mom?”

She laughed softly. “Very well then. Make yourself comfortable, and I'll try to keep it concise. It's a bit of an epic in spots.”

Keith settled in and gazed up at his mother with the wide-eyed, eager stare that never failed to bring an affectionate smile to her face. Bestowing that smile upon him, she began.

“In the ancient days, when all of creation ended at the sky and the world was very different, when the Gods still walked among mortalkind and left burning footprints upon the ocean, it was a time of great and wondrous things. In those days were the great ones, the legends, the mightiest beasts and those who hunted them. I shall tell you now of one of the greatest hunts of all.

“In the Age of the Kimbranosh, the Year of the Lokoni-Sadrett, in the Season of Hadrith, a monster came into the world, and it was unlike any monster that had ever been before. It was dark, and yet it blazed. It had no substance, and yet whatever it touched was destroyed. It had many limbs, but did not walk. It had no eyes, and yet it saw. It had a mouth that was perfectly round and lined with row after row of terrible teeth, and it hungered always. It had no heart, and yet it was animate. It could not be said that the thing was alive, for it had no soul, and yet it had purpose. The name the people gave it was _Tigramosh-Mum'NakNak,_ the Devourer With Teeth Of Burning Ice. It is said that it chewed its way into the world through a full solar eclipse, and it began immediately to feed heavily on all that it came near. It came near to the great roving herds of changash, and soon there were no herds. It came near the grasslands, and soon there was no grass. It came near the forests, and soon there were no forests. It came near the people, and the people soon learned to flee its shadow.

“They cried out to the Gods, because dealing with this sort of thing was Their job. In truth, however, the Gods Themselves were more than a little unnerved by this thing. It devoured everything, you see. Absolutely everything, from earthquakes to thunderbolts, it drank up floods and sucked down storms, and fire had no effect at all. Nor did magic, which really upset Them.”

Zaianne tapped the spear on the floor again and raised a cautionary hand. “Tigramosh-Mum'NakNak was a rogue fragment of Oblivion, and none of Them had any idea of how to handle that... save one, Who might be considered a relation to that force. Kuphorosk, God of Death, the greatest of all hunters. In those days, my son, He hunted with three Knives instead of a Spear. A Knife of Stone, for when He sought prey among the living. A Knife of Ice, for when He sought prey among the dead. A Knife of Shadows, for when He sought prey among the dreams of the people, for there are things lurking beyond the barrier of sleep that may not be permitted under a living sky. A Human might call them 'demons'.”

Keith shifted, frowning. “That's a little unusual for a death-god, isn't it? Some of the ones from Earth had whole armies of those.”

Zaianne smiled. “Kuphorosk wasn't that silly. He knew damned well whose side He was on. Without mortal life, what use was He? Oh no, He defended us as vigorously as any herdsman defends his animals from predators, and He'd just been presented with the supernatural equivalent of Godzilla. Never let it be said that He was one to turn down a challenge, for He sharpened his Knives with a whetstone of black diamond and went immediately to the hunt.

“Truly it is said that Kuphorosk was the greatest, for the greatest hunters do not seek their prey; He studied His foe, and found what it liked best, and He waited for it to come to him. Tigramosh-Mum'NakNak had a taste for Galra, and He hid himself in the shadow of the largest encampment and lurked there until it came. It came, all right, drawn by the scent of living minds, for the thing fed as greedily upon thought as it did upon flesh. Before it could strike, Kuphorosk leaped out of hiding, slashing it across the flank with the Knife of Stone to get its attention. It was just as well that He wasn't expecting that weapon to do anything else, for the blade snapped off on the beast's hide, and the broken-off part flew seven miles to the west, where it split a mountain in half. You can still see it, as a matter of fact; it's known today as Split Peak, and it's located in the northwestern quadrant of the Telkarho Domain. The mountain is an old volcano that blew out sideways instead of up, and right down the middle is an enormous sheet of obsidian that looks very much like a broken-off knifepoint.”

“Wow,” Keith said.

Zaianne grinned. “That's what the God said, although His language might have been a bit more pungent. Divine weapons aren't supposed to break like that. Either way, Tigramosh-Mum'NakNak now had its full attention focused upon Kuphorosk, and when He headed north toward a stretch of frozen wasteland, it followed. There it was that He drew His Knife of Ice, there in that portion of the world where that weapon was strongest, and they did battle.”

Zaianne paused, stared thoughtfully into the middle distance, and then shook her head. “To make a long story short, they had a real brawl. Death is related to oblivion, but it is not the same thing. Kuphorosk could harry the creature, and He could weary the creature, but He could not hurt it with the Knife of Ice. After a time, the blade broke, even as its Stone brother had, and the broken point may still be seen today at the magnetic North Pole of Galran Prime, as a sliver of ice that is fifty feet wide and two hundred feet tall, sticking out of a glacier. Kuphorosk was furious. It's very hard to put a decent edge upon ice, you know, and finding and setting the right spells to keep the hilt from melting in His hand or giving Him frostbite took a great deal of work.”

Keith scratched thoughtfully at one ear. “He should've gone with the Knife of Shadows first.”

Zaianne nodded. “Perhaps, but He didn't like to use it outside of the realm of dreams. It had a tendency to... leak, I suppose the word is. Any shadow in the real world that the Knife came in contact with took on some of its attribute of utter sharpness, which could quickly turn a battlefield into a small universe full of razors. Kuphorosk, being of much the same substance as that knife, could also be hurt with it. In dreams, dark and light can be the same thing, and what is real and what isn't are very malleable. But yes, He drew the Knife of Shadows, and that blade did bite deep into the not-flesh of Tigramosh-Mum'NakNak. Kuphorosk was able to smash out its biggest fang and cut away one of its legs before the blade snapped off at the crosspiece, and the monster fled howling with the broken-off bit still embedded in it.

“Kuphorosk did not follow, for He was very weary, and His three favorite weapons were damaged or gone. Instead, He lifted the still-twitching limb and the tooth of cold flame and resolved to make good use of them. It is known the universe over that the greatest foe of any entity great or small is that entity itself; Kuphorosk now had the keys to that monster's demise.”

Zaianne paused again, smiling. “There is a song here, one of several, that tells of how Kuphorosk had to borrow a toolkit from His brother Korshedrosk, God of Craftsmen, and He had a terrible time keeping that Divine Tinkerer from stealing His project. Having extracted the bones and sinews, He purified them and the fang in the Font of Sophora, hardened them on the Forge of Time, bound them into the physical world with the Song of _Manu-Vak-Choranta,_ bound them into the spiritual world with the Song of _Ultarga-Nash'Zakero,_ bound it into the Places Beyond with the Song of _Khorzera'Pak-Gherosh,_ carved and assembled the pieces, and then infused the whole thing with _Tahe Moq_ for good measure. It was quite an artifact. The shaft was as strong as the hearts of mountains, yet swift as a ray of light. The spearhead was so sharp that it could cut a shadow away from that which had cast it, or cut a soul from a body without harming either, and when He swung it a couple of times to get a feel for it, He sliced the wind itself into four quarters, which have yet to recombine. When He tapped the spear butt upon a slab of granite, the sound was heard around the world three times, it echoed so, and the granite burst into dust at the impact. The fires of the blood of the earth could not warm it. The ice at the ends of the earth could not chill it. The winds did not wear at it, nor did the waters, and when He raised it on high, the sun herself was forced to dodge out of the way, the moons fled and hid, and the stars withdrew to a safe distance for a week.”

Keith grinned. “No more Mister Nice God.”

“He had good reason to be annoyed with the creature.” Zaianne's nails tapped on the spearshaft again, and she continued. “Armed and ready, Kuphorosk set out to find Tigramosh-Mum'NakNak. He hunted high, and He hunted low, and He hunted all around; He hunted far and He hunted wide, for the beast had gone to ground. And so on and so forth for another forty-seven verses. That's epic poetry for you. Kuphorosk eventually located it when He took to the air—it had settled onto a large mountain while He was busy making the spear, and had gnawed the peak right down to ground level, leaving only a strange series of concentric rings in the bedrock. Another geographic feature that can still be seen today, only the geologists claim that it's an ancient rock dome, eroded right down into the ground. The locals still call it by the old name— _Mum'NakNak-Nauma,_ the Devourer's Dinner-Plate. Kuphorosk had rather liked that particular mountain, and He tore into the monster with a vengeance, and with rather more success than before. As He had thought, the creature had no defenses against its own substance and it was stunned by his furious assault. There follows another piece of battle poetry that lists every blow and gory detail, of course, and the full version takes something like a half-hour to get through. Suffice it to say that the God gave the monster a thorough thrashing before He stabbed it through the heart that it didn't have. Unfortunately, this didn't have the optimal result.”

Keith scowled, a little disappointed. “It didn't die?”

She shook her head. “Not precisely. It wasn't really a living thing to start with. He'd smacked it hard enough and often enough with the butt of the spear to cause cracking throughout its entire substance, and when He stabbed it, it shattered into a million million pieces. Most of those fragments dissipated into nothing, but a scattering of them escaped into the world, too many for the battle-weary God to catch. These pieces, should they work their way into a mortal heart, would endow their victims with the attributes of Tigramosh-Mum'NakNak, turning them into dire devourers and dreadful monsters untouchable by normal means. Kuphorosk knew this, and He made it known to mortalkind that this was so. To balance his mistake, He then decreed that should any of these corrupted ones arise, mortal Galra would have the privilege of invoking the Bone Spear. Any such spear made by mortal hands would contain some of the essence of the original, and would be used for the sole purpose of ridding the world of those monsters. To keep these sacred weapons from inappropriate use, Kuphorosk laid down the stipulation that the mission must be carried out no matter what, or the spear would punish its maker's cowardice. In a way, the God's hunt has never really ended.”

Keith scratched his chin thoughtfully. “I can see that. How many people made bone spears after that?”

“Surprisingly few,” Zaianne admitted. “They're very rare. In all of the thousands of years since the ancient days, perhaps only a few hundred such spears have been made. The Banimrosh Museum on Namtura has three of them on display, and you can feel the residual power in them from right across the room. As far as I know, this one is the only active one in existence. Technically, I shouldn't be handling it, but I have been given the privilege of _ghren-khesh'vaaht;_ my strength and Lizenne's strength are as one, and I will not carry a weapon that I don't know how to use.”

“Makes sense to me,” Keith said, standing up and stretching out his shoulders. “Is it all right if I hold it? I just want a closer look.”

Zaianne nodded. “Yes, but be careful. You are not entirely of Galra blood, and I don't know how it will affect you.”

Keith nodded and took the spear. It was surprisingly light for its size and remarkably well-balanced, and it felt like one would expect such an instrument to feel. Smooth under his bare fingers, possessed of an authoritative weight, but nothing out of the ordinary. It wasn't until his right hand gripped the place where the tambok fang had been bound into the yulpadi bone that he felt the strangeness of the weapon. An almost electric shock passed up his arm and into his mind, and suddenly--

 

_Hold together, damn it, hold together!_

_I'm trying! We won't survive another hit like that, guys—we've lost the Sword. I don't think that the Shield'll be back up anytime soon, either._

_Keith! Keith, are you all right? Answer me!_

_Keith swallowed hard on a dry throat, his gut lurching sickeningly as the cockpit tumbled around him. He hurt all over, as if he'd been flung hard against a wall, and his eyes refused to focus. Voltron lurched, coasted, lurched again, accelerated mercilessly for an eternity or two, and then slowed enough for him to mumble a response. There were more voices, the words jumbled up like the pieces of a puzzle. Shouts. Curses. Mechanical alerts and alarms. He felt broken, and his Lion felt broken, and over it all was a song of despair that sang through his mind rather than his comms, and it was difficult to ignore. Give up, it said, you negligible little fools in your tiny little toy robot, you never had a chance against something so great. It is futile to resist a primal force of the universe itself; lay down your paltry weapons and surrender to the inevitable._

_Keith had no strength left, and his weary eyes strayed to a secondary screen that showed only stars. Little stars and big stars, blue and white and orange and red, gems flung against the windblown bluish silk of a nebula... and a flash of gold that outshone them all. A shock ran through him as the flash became a streak, and a split second later he beheld an impossibility; it shone before him like an icicle in the hard bright light of dawn, and yet it burned. The sleek curve of it, the utter sharpness of the edges, fine serrations glittering, this sliver struck from the heart of a star, this fragment of eternal defiance against the nothingness of oblivion... and it felt like three of the people that he had come to hold most dear. He reached for it, his Lion reached for it, Voltron reached for it as a drowning man might seize a floating branch, and their heart filled to bursting with the gift they had been given. Dimly and far away, something let out a howl of catastrophic rage, and he and his kin turned to face it--_

 

Keith stumbled back a step with a startled cry, shaking his head to clear it, and he pushed the spear back into his mother's hands when she reached out to steady him. He clung gasping to her arm for a moment, and his own arm tingled fiercely for a few seconds before the sensation faded off a little. Zaianne stood still until he had regained his composure. “Will you want training in spearmanship?”

“No,” he panted, “it wasn't that. It was... I don't know what it was. Something to do with Voltron. We're... the Lions are going to use the spear somehow.”

Zaianne's eyebrows shot up. “I have no idea how that's going to be possible.”

“I don't either,” Keith replied, shaking out his tingling arm, “but it's the only way.”

Zaianne scowled at the spear in her hand. As remarkable as the shaft's strength and the spearhead's sharpness was, it was completely inappropriate for a space battle. A peculiar object indeed for such work; simple and primitive... but it was a _bone spear,_ and her instincts were telling her that the weapon was a great deal more than a few bits of dead animal and a castoff fang from a drugged carnivore. “Are you sure, Khaeth?”

Keith nodded, a strange certainty shining like polished steel in his mind. “Yeah. I don't know why, but yeah. Loliqua did say that Voltron's sword was going to break in a fight, and that I should look to the stars for help...?”

His mother nodded, tracing the serrations on the spearhead's edge with a thoughtful claw. “Yes. Exactly how this thing will make a difference against such enemies as we have made escapes me. Ah, well, I'm sure that it will come clear in time. Hopefully before everything is drowned in failure, by my preference. Do you still want to spar, my son?”

Keith's palm prickled as though he were holding a live hedgehog, and he felt a sudden terrible urge to yank the tambok fang from its sinew bindings and slay monsters with it. What made him uneasy was that the urge did not originate in his own heart. “Not tonight, Mom,” he said, tearing his eyes away from the gleaming alien ivory with difficulty. “I might get carried away and do something dumb. Maybe you can teach me to play Dix-Par instead? Tilla keeps winning all of my cookies.”

Zaianne smiled. “She cheats shamelessly. Certainly, I can teach you to do the same, although isn't that Celenast's job?”

Keith smiled wryly. “We're still working on haggling and picking pockets right now, though he says that we can start cardsharping in another few days or so. I'd like to surprise him.”

Zaianne nodded decisively. “A worthy exercise. You get the deck and some cookies and meet me in the lounge. I need to return this to its proper handler.” She tapped the butt of the spear lightly on the floor, and the sound of it echoed strangely loud around the room. “We do not want to give it more ideas than we already have, I feel.”

Keith stared at the spear and felt his hand prickle again. “Yes.”

 

Lotor walked down the long halls toward the throne room, his pace brisk and his posture stiff with barely-concealed irritation. Most of that was due to his escort; the pair of Ghamparva agents that walked along behind him had been very polite when they had come to fetch him home, but they had also been worryingly direct. In truth, he did not like them at all, nor did he approve of their Order. Ghamparva tended to be implacable, unbending, stone-faced killers who thought nothing of committing mass murder when they felt the need to do so, and they respected neither status nor rank when in pursuit of prey. Only the Emperor himself could command them, and they all would cut their own throats rather than fail him. There was no intimidating a Ghamparva, no bribing one, nor was there any hope of dissuading them from doing what they felt to be their duty. They were also some of the most skilled and dirtiest fighters in the Empire, which was one of the reasons that Lotor had come along without a fight. Lotor was an expert swordsman, but there was something about the cold-eyed gazes of these two agents that told him that attempting anything would be a bad idea. He'd heard that no few of his elder half-brothers had learned that the hard way...

Part of the Ghamparva's duties concerned ambitious princes, and disposing of them when they got too ambitious. Lotor had been very careful, but it didn't take much to attract the Order's attention. Lotor ground his teeth. He would have to see if he could find some way to distract them from himself, and soon. Assuming, of course, that he survived this meeting. He had not exactly covered himself in glory lately, and his father was not known for his mercy.

Or for his sweet and gentle nature; the gaze from the armored figure on the throne was icy, and Lotor's expert eye read cold dissatisfaction in his father's posture. He could not see the Emperor's expression, for the old man had made a change in his wardrobe of late; a full suit of armor, complete with full helmet, and a pair of small, high-grade Quintessence canisters were mounted on the shoulder pauldrons. The wound he'd suffered at the hands of the Paladins had warned him that his usual gear hadn't been good enough; Lotor felt himself able to spare a grain of pity for any idiot who dared to challenge the Emperor now. As always, Haggar lurked in the shadows by his side, almost invisible save for the glowing yellow eyes beneath the hood. Both dire figures watched him wordlessly as he came up before them and bent the knee.

It was several long, uncomfortable seconds before the Emperor spoke. “Lotor. It seems that you have made quite a name for yourself in certain quarters.”

Lotor felt a trickle of cold sweat start between his shoulderblades. His father's voice was as mild as milk, which was always a bad sign. _Oh, damn,_ he thought, but kept his own expression calm. “A natural side effect of decisive action, Father,” he replied smoothly. “There are always critics.”

“Yes.” The Emperor shifted on his throne, and Lotor caught a whiff of that new-battlesuit smell; there was also a hint of something dry and acrid that made the hairs on the back of Lotor's neck stand up, although he could not have said why. “Your actions have accrued some considerable expense, however, and you seem to have little to show for it. Report, Lotor. You will tell me what you have been up to.”

Lotor swallowed hard and complied, careful to leave out no details. His father would already have read the reports—and there would have been plenty. He had survived too long in his father's service to believe that the old man trusted him any further than he could have thrown him, and doubtless had spies aboard every ship in Lotor's fleet. Trying to root them out would have led to a whole different set of problems, and he had seen what had happened to a few of his half-brothers when they had tried to mislead or subvert those agents. The lucky ones had been assassinated.

Zarkon and his witch watched him closely throughout his recitation, and remained silent for a little time once he had finished. Finally, there was a sigh from the Throne. “Disappointing. I should think that one with such advantages as yours would have yielded better results. Particularly with that pair of Tarzeroth-class destroyers.”

“The planet-busters had been given the new encryption protocols that Haggar had prepared,” Lotor said evenly. “They are also slow to fire and difficult to aim. It was my intention to use them to destroy the pirates' stronghold and any other dark port or smuggler's haven that we discovered. It was none of my doing that the green Paladin was able to crack it—she hadn't before, after all. This is not the first time that Haggar's spells have come second to the talents of that little witch.”

“I am aware,” the Emperor said, and Lotor had the pleasure of seeing Haggar cast the old man an uneasy glance. “Your reaction to one particular pirate disturbs me. Do you feel yourself unable to handle a single Hoshinthra Warleader?”

Lotor had to suppress a shiver at the thought of that particular ship. “I will remind you, Father, that the Warleader in question has been haunting that region for five hundred standard years. Captains far more experienced than I am have challenged her, and have never been seen nor heard from ever again. I might take up that challenge in the future, perhaps, but not without a great deal more study. Study that I intend to undertake as soon as possible—she has made several attempts to take my ship already.”

“And has failed; few other ships may count themselves so lucky,” Zarkon murmured. “And yet, when you finally found them, the Paladins proved to be too much for you.”

“I was outnumbered five to one, and they had an Elikonian with them,” Lotor pointed out. “Even so, I might have had them if Haggar's hex had not failed. I was told that they would not be able to form Voltron, and yet it was Voltron who forced us to retreat. While I must admit failure, Father, the failures are not wholly on my part.”

There was a faint growl from the hooded figure by the Throne, and an equally faint _hmph_ from its incumbent. “Nonetheless, there should not have been failures at all. It is an embarrassment to the might of my Empire. You will commit no more of them, Lotor.”

Lotor bowed his head to hide his relief; he was being given a second chance. “I will not, Father.”

“See to it,” the Emperor said in a voice of iron, followed by a rattle of armored fingertips upon one arm of the Throne. “Tell me, my son...”

Surprised by the odd tension in his father's voice, Lotor looked up. “Father?”

“Who wears the black armor now?”

Lotor blinked. None of the Paladins had been wearing black when he'd fought them. Unless... “I believe that the black Lion has accepted Princess Allura as Paladin, Father, although she wore pink rather than black.”

“Alfor's daughter,” Zarkon murmured thoughtfully. “A little girl with a head full of romantic notions and foolish ideals. How Alfor expected her to shoulder the weight of his kingdom without breaking, I cannot guess, although there may be something more to her if the Lion is willing to permit her anywhere near it. Interesting. She has my bayard?”

“She does, Father.” Lotor replied. “In her hands, it is a whip.”

Zarkon rumbled, considering that. “And no other weapon?”

“No, sir. The only one of the Paladins who has figured out that the bayards may be several weapons is the green one, and even she only uses two forms—a punch dagger and a grapple.”

The Emperor leaned back in his seat with a satisfied chuckle. “They are still children, despite the allies that they have made. We shall separate them from the tools that they are too inexperienced to use correctly. Haggar, are the preparations underway?”

“Construction began this morning,” Haggar replied quietly, “and the subject is ready. I also have two others that will serve to give those fools something to waste their strength upon. Paltry creatures when compared to the third, but they will do.”

“Good,” Zarkon said. “Begone, Lotor. I do not expect to need you again... save only in the unlikely event that Haggar's attempts might fail. Go and study that last member of a vanished race. Ridding the universe of it will be a suitable test of your skills.”

Lotor was too relieved to do anything more than bow and take his leave, and the two Ghamparva watched him go with cold, impassive eyes until the throne room's door had closed behind him.

“Want us to keep an eye on him, Majesty?” one of them asked in a thoughtful tone.

Zarkon considered that. “From a distance. He is not a threat to me at this time. Should I have any reason to think otherwise, you have my permission to take the necessary steps. In the meantime, should you happen to find what my son has let slip through his fingers, you will bend all your efforts upon succeeding where he has failed.”

The Ghamparva nodded and touched his fist to his breast in salute. “Understood, Majesty. _Vrepet Sa.”_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If Lance had been present for Zaianne's tale, the demon would have forever had its name changed to NakNakNomNom. Lance will never hear this story. (As it is, I am guilty of constantly using that nickname myself, and Spanch shows her sisterly love for me by not having murdered me yet.)
> 
> I know I say this all the time, but thank you to everyone who leaves us kudos and comments. You all deserve Hunk's cookies.


	3. Learning Experiences

Chapter 3: Learning Experiences

 

Lance sidled silently along the wall, ears alert for any sound and eyes seeking out any movement at either end of the hall, his own feet making no noise on the floorplates. Cautiously, he peered around a corner, looking for any opposition. There was no sign of life at all, but he pulled the small device that Nasty had taught him and his team how to make just yesterday out of his pocket. Lance wasn't able to pronounce the Unilu word for this object, but Keith's slightly checkered past had supplied a different name. Nasty had cackled appreciatively when they explained the term “fuzzbuster”; whatever they might call it, it worked all the same. Right now, it was registering three motion sensors, two vid-cams, a smoke bomb, and—oops—Tilla. Tilla loved helping their nefarious little instructor with these infiltration lessons because it gave her an excuse to chase them at top speed through the halls of the Castle, roaring all the way. Pidge had been right, he mused as he hit the button that would temporarily jam the electronic security; charging rhinos always won, especially if they were dragons. Moving quickly, Lance stepped past the sensors, edged carefully around the smoke bomb, and headed down the hall that didn't have a dragon lurking in it. It led directly away from his desired destination, but he was aware that there was a service duct in the ceiling that led up and around the trouble spot. Pidge had an unfair advantage in that department, but the ducts were still big enough for him to wiggle through; he'd just removed the service panel when he heard a _gronk_ that made the wall panels quiver in response, and a ladylike scream that was probably Allura. Lance heaved himself up through the admit and pulled the panel closed just in time; the sound of running feet—upright biped and very large quadruped—stampeded by a second or two later. He didn't exit again after they had gone, but continued onward through the service tunnel. It was all too likely that Soluk had taken his mate's position... or worse, that Zaianne or Lizenne had. Lance wasn't sure which was worse, the ladies or the dragons.

Carefully, he wormed his way around the trouble spot—oh, yeah, it was still being watched, all right. Nasty himself was there, flipping one of his daggers idly in one hand, almost invisible from the grate that Lance was peering through. With infinite care, Lance progressed, only to find another course hazard; sitting on the junction box in the next section of tunnel was one of the mice. It was the biggest of them, which was encouraging; Platt could be bribed. If it had been Chuchule, the game would have been up right then and there. Smirking, he pulled a few cookies from a pocket and waved them at the mouse, who twitched its ears and held up a tiny paw. Sighing, Lance added another two cookies to the bribe, which was peered at by the fat mouse, and deemed acceptable. Lance added one more to keep the little pseudorodent from—ahem—ratting him out; they shook on it, and Lance passed by in safety. Everybody had started carrying packets of cookies around recently, whether it was for paying off the mice, cardsharping lessons, or emergency snacks. Lots of emergency snacks. Nasty wasn't the only one giving lessons right now.

Lance sighed again at that thought as he eased himself out of the service duct. Lizenne had been drilling him and the others ruthlessly in the aetheric arts. Part of her private talk with Loliqua had probably involved the exercises and disciplines that the Healer had taught him before he'd been “rescued”, for she had been quizzing him on every fine point that she could think of lately. Most of the training was in the form of mental exercises, augmented by a sort of self-maintenance exercise to keep his own health up, and the occasional self-test whenever the others pulled a muscle or needed a bruise or a headache cured. He was getting good at it, but it was a lot of work, and it left him in need of a hot soak in the big tub afterward. Most of the time, anyway...

Lance gritted his teeth and eased another ventilation grid out of its slot. Hunk and Pidge did most of their technomage practice in the lab, since Lizenne couldn't help them much with that, and the pair of them were big enough geniuses to be able to teach themselves, anyway. The real problem was getting them to stop before they exhausted themselves, especially when they'd hit on a really interesting project. Allura had been learning the finer points of energy transfer and manipulation, which had left her as weary as everyone else, and Keith... he wasn't all that sure of what to make of Keith's new trick. Both Lizenne and Zaianne had been dropping hexes around and Keith had been popping them right and left, and as a result there was a faint whiff of scorched hair around him more or less constantly. Except when their adoptive aunt had them doing group exercises.

Lance dropped down from the ceiling admit as quietly as he could and continued onward, checking his fuzzbuster for any more surprises, although his mind could not help but stray to the group sessions in aetherics that Lizenne had started them on. Allura could work well with anybody; she was a powerload, absorbing magic and giving it back in a form that any of the others could easily use; it was likely that she could give Voltron a boost in the same way that she had given the Balmera a boost long ago, and Pidge had been all for hunting up Lotor's fleet again so that they could try it out. Pidge and Hunk were scary when they worked together, they really were, even when they weren't using their mage-talents. Lance could _almost_ see where his own talents linked into Hunk's, something about how he made things fit together so that they functioned perfectly; Pidge was easier, especially when she switched from circuitry to manipulating plants. Growth, after all, mechanical or organic, had a lot to do with Healing. And then there was Keith. His talent was limited to simple purification so far, but it was surprisingly effective. He made it easier for Allura to clean up and transmit power; he could burn grime off an engine or help Pidge burn bad code out of a program, and he'd already shown that he could rid someone's body of hexes and poisons. It was when he and Keith had worked together to cure the case of food poisoning that Nasty'd gotten from a bowl of cimblit that Coran had left lying around in the cooler for too long that was sticking in his mind. The cure had gone as smooth as silk and Nasty had bounced up from his cot in perfect health; it was what had happened between him and Keith that was bugging him.

Lance peered cautiously around a corner, checked his fuzzbuster again, and froze when he heard a distant _gronk._ Soluk this time, and from the sound of the yelling, Hunk. It really was amazing how well those two big dragons could hide in plain sight, and they coordinated so well that it was almost magic. _Not unlike what you two did,_ an evil little voice snickered in the back of his mind. Lance rolled his eyes at his own psyche, but couldn't dispute it, not down at the bottom of his own heart. His and Keith's talents had meshed together like gears while they had worked on the Unilu's outraged digestive system, and Lance was having a hard time forgetting how Keith had warmed him while they worked, and how his own power had kept Keith from overheating. More than that, it had felt _good_ in ways that he had never experienced before, and part of him wanted to feel that way again. Keith hadn't said anything about it, but he knew his teammate well enough to know that it was lingering in Keith's mind too.

“ _No,”_ Lance hissed to himself as he made the final approach toward his goal. “I don't swing that way, Keith doesn't swing that way, and my family would freak. Parts of it would freak out at other parts. They'd all freak out at each other all at once, and that would break a lot of noise pollution laws. It wouldn't be just Castro's ghost they'd raise, but probably Che's as well, and he wasn't a nice guy to be around...”

He heard a faint footstep nearby and ducked around another corner, then stood as silent and still as he could manage while Zaianne flowed past, as serene and deadly as a great white shark. Lance reflected that his family was going to freak anyway, if only because he'd acquired an adoptive aunt that was not only a super magic ninja purple werewolf, but who had been an illegal alien in more ways than one since she'd been about his age. To say nothing about the other one, who was a practicing witch. And the uncle who looked like one of Dr. Frankenstein's side jobs when he took off his shirt and had a lot of cloned body parts. Lance rolled his eyes again and considered some of the more reactionary of his relatives. Maybe if he gave them  _enough_ to freak out about, they'd all keel over of toxic option syndrome and he and Uncle Ernesto—who had been living quite happily with his husband in Miami for twenty years—could roll them into a back room and go out for tacos. It was going to be hard enough to keep Cousin Maria-Dolores, who was a nun of great faith and zeal, from grabbing him by the ear and dragging him to the nearest seminary if she ever found out that he had the Healing Touch.

A sudden, loud,  _“EEEK! EEEK! EEEK!”_ and a mad scrabble of tiny claws right above his head shook him out of his thoughts and into lightning motion, and he ran as though his pants were on fire past three more intersections before he came to a gasping halt in a doorframe. A distant shout, a clang, and some loud and very exotic cusswords told him that Pidge had not been able to bribe Plachu properly. The unmistakable sound of Lizenne's laughter echoed down the hall, which all too often was the sound of No Escape in these exercises. She knew a version of the Vulcan Neck Pinch that actually worked. Lance drew in a deep calming breath and checked his fuzzbuster again. It lit up with all sorts of warnings, right behind the door he was leaning on, in fact. He gave the door a long, considering look. It was locked, of course, and not only with its own systems, but with an ornate official seal that Coran must have dug out of a storeroom somewhere. Inside the room, the fuzzbuster reported a full-spectrum sensor system, a pitfall, a deadfall, a sleepy-gas bomb, a net, an electrified tripwire, his insane sewing machine, and a mouse wearing a very small suit of armor. That last was one of Hunk's little projects, and it made the mice even more dangerous than before. He was currently working on building teeny-weeny little blasters for them too, a fact that had been worrying Lance more than a little. It was possible that the mission objective was in that room. It  _made sense_ that the object would be in that room, and not so long ago, he would have fallen for it. Nasty had been telling them about the ways that different cultures tended to think. A Galra military officer would definitely put something small and valuable into the strongest lockup possible and defend that lockup with his life, but a Blade of Marmora would have at least three identical lockups, only one of which might have the treasure, and all three would be loaded with booby-traps instead of troops. According to Coran, Alteans preferred automated defenses for the most part, backed up by secrecy; it was amazing what you could get away with if you just didn't tell anyone what you were doing. An Unilu, however...

Lance nodded and trotted away down the hall toward one of the many disused offices on this level. Unilu were made of sneaky and misdirection was a cultural art form. Crash around in the open, he said. Make a spectacle, he said.  _And while the marks are staring at the fireworks, pick their pockets and slip away._ Nasty's own grandmother, he had told them, had done precisely that to no less than four lynch mobs in the six years prior to Nasty's banishment, and none of them had caught her yet. If an Unilu wanted to hide something, he'd make a huge production of it, and then put the treasure where no one would ever think of looking. Lance glanced around as he made his way down the hall, picking the corridor where the light-strips were dim and flickering in spots, and chose the office at the far end where the doorway was nearly invisible in the shadows. He was about to check it for traps when he heard the distant sound of a lot of booby traps going off all at once, and the triumphant squeaks of Chulatt.  _So much for Keith,_ Lance thought, and touched the door's keypad.

The door hissed open, and Lance pitied the long-ago aide's assistant's associate's secretary's intern's gofer who had been stuck with working in here. The room was barely large enough for the desk, and the desk itself was obviously a third-hand acquisition from a college dorm. Probably after a frat party, to judge by the dents in it. Lance had to haul on the one half-intact drawer handle to get it to open, but he smiled even through the puff of centuries-old dust. His guess had been good, and he snatched up the small packet out of its nest of ancient office supplies. Now came the hard part—getting back to the bridge with the loot. Now, how was he going to do that? With the others out of the picture, the bad guys were going to team up to look for him. In fact...

_There were footsteps just outside of the door._ Lance dove beneath the desk as the door hissed open, and to his surprise, there was a sliding panel in the floor. It was old, but someone had greased the tracks recently, and when he pulled on the toggle, it slid open without a sound, revealing a shaft. He dropped down through it without hesitation, wondering what sort of side business that that long-ago gofer had been running. Nothing large-scale, that was for sure; the passage was very narrow and dark, and it branched frequently. Using the fuzzbuster's backlit screen, he was able to spot scratches here and there in the walls that looked like Altean writing. While he couldn't read more than a few handy phrases of the language, he had made a point to learn the important symbols; mostly the ones that meant things like “restrooms”, “lifts”, “edibles”, “shuttle bay”, “right”, “left”, “up”, “down”, “no parking”, and “imminent doom”. His current favorite was the logograph that meant “dancing naked in the rain”, but that one wasn't likely to appear down here. Instead, he found his way through a series of passages that led out into the Hydroponics section, and he paused a moment to stare at the tanks and pots of strange alien growths—one or two of which stared back—before heading for the nearest lift up to the bridge.

The others were there already, his teammates looking sullen while Nasty told them in detail what they'd done wrong while Lizenne, Coran, the dragons, the mice, and Zaianne stood by. At Lance's arrival, the short, wiry Unilu spun around without skipping a beat.

“And you!” Nasty said sharply, waving a pair of admonishing fingers. “Forgot that you had a time limit, didn't you? You're a good _sildar_ late, your contact's bailed, the shuttle's flown, and you didn't get the packet either.”

Lance sneered; he'd been yelled at by Nasty too many times now to take it personally. “As if. If I could find one buyer, I can find another, and there's a new shuttle every hour. Who says I didn't get the packet? It's right here, Teach.”

Nasty sneered right back when he pulled the small object out of his pocket. “Who says it's the right one? Did you check it for authenticity?”

“I didn't have time,” Lance countered easily. “Besides, what's in it won't matter so long as a buyer thinks that it's what he wants, and I'm well-away with the money.”

Nasty grinned evilly. “Risky, Blue Boy, risky! Those with cash enough to buy this sort of thing can also buy you a lot of trouble. Go on, check what's in the thing first.”

Lance humphed, but opened the packet. Inside, wadded up in a mass of packing foam, was what appeared to be a large steel lug nut from Pidge's lab. He and the others had been told that the packet contained a large faceted tulmonere gem borrowed from Lizenne's treasure chest. On the whole, Lance reflected, it could have been worse.

Nasty laughed at him, pulled out an identical packet, and unwrapped it to show him a palm-sized glittering blue-purple stone. “It was in my pocket the whole time, kids. You should know by now that a real paranoid is going to keep something like this on him.”

Lance grinned and poked at the stone with a disdainful finger. “Yeah, since it's not worth much. Tulmoneres are used as driveway gravel on some planets. At least this lug nut is useful. Besides, I've got something better.”

Nasty gave him a narrow look. “Oh?”

“Sure,” Lance said, and pulled out something that had rattled out of a junction box when he'd been squeezing through a particularly tight spot. The sleek, elegantly-patterned, solid-silver gravy ladle shone like a fragment of starshine in his hand. “What's this worth to you?”

Nasty squawked and lunged forward, hands grabbing wildly for the greater treasure. Lance took shameful advantage of his superior height, shoving the packet into a pocket and placing his free hand on Nasty's forehead and holding him at arm's length. The others couldn't help but laugh, which snapped Nasty out of his fury. Nasty pulled away with a growl and lashed out at Lance's knees with a knife, which the taller boy eluded with surprising grace; the Unilu pursued, and Lance was soon leading him a merry dance around the room, grinning widely while the others laughed themselves silly. Nasty eventually gave him a glare that promised a reckoning in the near future and sheathed his knives. “All right, Lance, who taught you that?”

Lance smirked, flipping the ladle in one hand. “Self-taught. I had to do this every time my parents threw a family reunion. Grandma makes the best blueberry pie in the universe, and trying to get one of those from the kitchen to the table through a sea of pie-crazed cousins intact... let's just say that you learn fancy footwork in a hurry in that sort of situation.”

“True,” Hunk added knowledgeably. “I've seen him do it.”

“Did the kids have knives, too?” Pidge asked.

Hunk hummed thoughtfully. “No, his Aunt Lucia knew better than to leave those around where the rugrats could get at them. His cousin Carlos is a real hazard with a spork, though.”

Lance rolled his eyes, his expression martyred. “Tell me about it. I've still got scars on my butt—whole rows of little four-dot marks where he was jabbing me with one of those things a couple of years ago. The doctor said that my ass looked like the Morse Code bit it.”

“Did he get the pie?” Allura asked.

“You could say that,” Lance's smile turned slightly evil. “I dropped it on his head. I don't think his mom ever got the stains out of his shirt.”

“Some days, you take what you can get,” Nasty said, eyeing the gravy ladle. “Hand over that ladle and nobody gets hurt.”

Lance twirled the ladle in his fingers and raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? You're standing in a roomful of space heroes, and you're saying that? Way to wind up dead in a ditch, pal. I asked you what this thing was worth to you, and I meant it.”

Nasty's eyes glinted appreciatively, and a sly grin spread itself over his olivine features. “Two gac and a promise not to gut you in your sleep.”

Lance shook his head. “Seven thousand gac and the color of your underwear.”

“Two hundred, and I don't cast your spotty butt in Lucite.”

“Five thousand, the tulmonere, and advertising rights on your forehead.”

“One thousand, the stone, and I won't knock you unconscious and tattoo you with the Hundred Blasphemies of Lazlir Mokk!”

They were nose-to-nose now, and everybody was watching them in rapt fascination.

“Four-fifty, the stone, the lug nut, and you do the dishes for a week!” Lance retorted.

Nasty hated housework. “Fifteen hundred, stone and lug nut, and a guarantee that your slippers won't vanish!”

Lance happened to love his slippers; they were the first pair he'd ever had that hadn't been gnawed on by either toddlers or dogs. “Watch it, pal, I still have that sewing machine. Four thousand, stone and lug nut, and that curvy knife with the swirly engraving.”

Nasty never carried a knife that he wasn't personally attached to. “Oh, don't you go there, you ugly, mud-colored—hey!”

“ _Gronk,”_ said Tilla, nipping the ladle out of Lance's hand with her long teeth and running out of the room with it.

“ _Foul!”_ Nasty yelled, and took off after her.

“Oh,” Coran said disappointedly, “and it was just getting good. You've picked up on the haggling fairly well, young man.”

Lance tucked his hands into his pockets with a nostalgic smile. “You should hear my sibs wrangling over a new video game. Does this mean I win?”

“It seems so,” Zaianne said with a smile. “You didn't get caught, you found the right room, you got away with a piece of loot, and you held off the major adversary without losing anything important. Well done.”

“Important?” Lance said, to general snickering from the others, and glanced down at the open packet in his hand. The lug nut was gone. “Oh.”

Pidge giggled. “Don't feel too bad about that. Nasty'll try to pick your pockets even if you don't have any. He's a thief. He's our thief until the month's up, but he's still a thief. Just be glad that Tilla and the mice are keeping him too busy to break into your rooms.”

Lizenne chuckled. “He'll soon regret it if he tries to sneak into mine. I expect that--”

She was cut off by a blip from the console that signaled a message coming through. Coran tapped the “accept” button, and a screen popped up to show Kolivan's red-streaked pantherine features. Allura stepped up smartly, having developed a healthy respect for the tall, dour man's abilities. “Greetings, Kolivan. What do you require of us?”

His harsh expression softened slightly, although he did not smile. _“A little aid would be welcome, Princess. We were not idle during your recovery, and have made some considerable progress during that time. An entire region teeters upon the edge of throwing off Imperial control, and we will require Voltron's aid to push it that last little bit further. I ask you to come to the Moon of Lashtar—Orandit Galaxy, Xulhan Region, Selphuro Sector, fourth quadrant, the Dunwot System. The leaders of a number of cadres wish to speak with you, Princess. And with you, Lizenne.”_

Lizenne's eyebrows lifted. “Made good use of those caches I gave you the locations of, eh?”

Kolivan nodded. _“The Beronites were very pleased to hear that you had kept your promise. More to the point, the data files gave us a significant advantage throughout that entire Sector. How did you find the answer to the Olodan Enigma?”_

Lizenne gave him a self-depreciating smile. “I didn't. Modhri did, by asking the Guardians nicely. The poor things were so struck by the novelty of a polite request that they invited us to tea.”

Kolivan looked a bit perplexed at that. _“Never let it be said that he lacks courage. Will you come, Princess?”_

“We will,” Allura said staunchly. “We have been out of action for too long, and we must break the grip of the Emperor wherever we may. How soon can we be there, Coran?”

Coran's fingers danced over the console. “Dunwot System's not too far from here. If you can open the wormhole, we'll be there quick as a wink.”

Allura glanced at Soluk, who nodded. Allura smiled, feeling her Lion's eagerness to fight evil in the back of her mind. “Then we will be there directly. I will see you soon, Kolivan.”

A faint smile touched his lips. _“We will be waiting.”_

Lance grinned as Allura leaped onto the pilot's dais, the control posts rising to meet her hands. “All right! A little action'll be a nice change of pace.”

Keith smiled, feeling his own Lion agreeing with that. “Yeah. You've been helping the Marmorans out, Lizenne?”

Lizenne shrugged. “Here and there, and mostly by accident. The Selphuro Sector is a rich one, and the Empire's been busily milking it dry for centuries. Since there are some very beautiful worlds and some very fine peoples at risk over there, I spent a part of my early years working to preserve what I could, and to spike the wheels of those who would destroy the irreplaceable for the sake of personal gain. The Nemortine Beronites gave me a number of extremely valuable sacred objects for safekeeping, for example, and I stepped up my game right after Modhri and I bought the _Chimera Rising._ I had declared _kheshveg,_ after all, and you and your team were providing us with such a wonderful diversion that the Governors over there couldn't move effectively to stop us for several months. Once Kolivan had thrown in his lot with you, all I had to do was to give him access to my previous work... and to a few of my gem-caches. I'm sneaky, but the Marmorans are far better at using such things effectively than I am.”

Pidge smiled grimly. “What people won't do for love or honor, they'll do for treasure. I know that one, all right.”

“What was the Olodan Enigma?” Hunk asked curiously.

Zaianne bared her teeth in an exasperated grimace. “The Olods were one of the Elder Races. Somewhere around the time that my people were just starting to harness fire, they simply picked up and left, taking most of their possessions with them. Just where they went is unknown, and some postulate that they may have migrated to a parallel dimension. They left a scattering of Artifacts behind them, most of which have already been puzzled out, but while all of those objects are amusing, they are of little use.”

“Like what?” Lance asked.

Zaianne waved a disdainful hand. “A mechanism the size of a house that does nothing but produce shining bubbles that burst with musical tones at three-minute intervals. A perfect sphere that does nothing but spin, and no art of ours can either slow or stop it. A bottle the size of a man that has only one end, and is half-full of fluid that swirls endlessly, and changes colors with the moods of those watching it. All of which, I believe, were toys for children. The Enigma is the only Artifact that has Guardians.”

Lizenne nodded. “Six very large and fearsome-looking ones. Cyborgs, I believe, although I could be wrong, and indestructible. Zarkon's scientists had certainly tested that aspect of them by the time we got there, and the creatures would not permit anyone anywhere near the Enigma. Five very influential religions have grown up around that device over the centuries, along with innumerable legends and speculative fiction, and millions of brash and avaricious fools have met their ends trying to discover the secret. The place was lined from floor to ceiling with bones and carapaces. Very dramatic, and the Guardians had been sculpting the piles into artistic structures around the Enigma itself, which is as big as a private space-yacht and looks like the sort of device that a mad scientist would make after drinking a half-keg of horath.”

“Ugh,” Hunk said with a scowl. “So, Modhri just goes in there and asks them?”

She smiled fondly. “And very politely, too. As it turns out, the Enigma is nothing more than an industrial-grade combination textile mill and lacemaker.”

They stared at her. Coran coughed. “A... a lacemaker? Then why have the Guardians standing around, then?”

“The Olods took the sartorial arts very seriously, and they really liked lace. It was a very high-end machine, capable of producing the very highest-quality product in incredible amounts.” Lizenne made a face. “It's also dangerous. The thing obtained its raw materials by disintegrating whatever might be piled up in the bin behind it and then converting the raw matter into the finest fabrics possible, in any color or pattern that the operator could think of. Regulations demanded that such an expensive and indiscriminate a device had to be off-limits to the general public. Can't have some tourist getting killed horribly and turned into a hundred and fifty yards of brocade, you know.”

“Yeah, but to the point of killing them?” Pidge asked. “That's a little harsh for just wanting some lace trim.”

“The Olods _really_ liked their silks and laces,” Lizenne replied darkly, “and didn't take well to those who would thieve the product or try to damage the production system. Besides, the Guardians themselves are programmed to be firm with intruders, and are armed only with the Olod version of stun weapons. It's not their fault that most modern peoples are a lot more fragile than the Olods were. From what we could gather, the Olods were an organo-silicoid race, a little like the Balmerans are, and had the constitutions of granite boulders.”

Keith snorted a laugh. “Cool. So, what did you do with it?”

Lizenne smirked at him. “We thanked the Guardians very kindly for the tea and conversation, then—after asking permission—hauled in a load of weeds and brush for the device to play with. We then subsequently delivered sets of lace-trimmed Olod-silk bedsheets to all five High Priests of the Faiths based on the Enigma, thereby earning the eternal respect of those Faiths. That's no small thing in that area.”

“Bedsheets,” Lance said, unsure of whether or not Lizenne was teasing them. “Seriously?”

“Oh, yes. The Chalmonaar, Olantine, Leprolese, Tob, and Bulsot religions are very different in many ways, but the one thing that they have in common is that a good night's sleep is sacrosanct,” Lizenne told him, looking up at the screens at the streaming blue light of a wormhole transition. “To receive such a gift from the focus of their Faith was a very important matter, and the fact that Modhri handed off each sheet-set with his usual gentle grace will buy the Galran people a little leniency in the coming years, despite the Empire's bad habits. It's hard to hate your favorite uncle, even if he looks like the same ugly purple aliens who've been treating your people so badly and stealing all of your treasure.”

Lance and the others considered that, and remembered that special, sweet smile that Modhri could use to such devastating effect. Hunk heaved a long sigh. “True. I'm going to have to get him to teach me how to do that, someday.”

Lance nudged him in the ribs. “But Hunk, you've already got that! You just haven't weaponized it like he has.”

Pidge giggled, grinning as the Castle and the _Chimera_ came back out into normal space, a small pale moon showing a distant, dim crescent in the screens. “He only uses his powers for good.”

 

The Moon of Lashtar was an excellent place to site a secret base. The moon itself was too small to hold onto an atmosphere and was essentially as coreless as a pancake; the cratered outer crust was simply that—a crust, under which lay a vast and labyrinthine network of natural caverns. The biggest of those had been converted into a concealed docking bay for starships, and there was just enough room to tuck both the _Chimera_ and the Castle within. The cavern itself was not pressurized, however, which had forced everyone to come wearing their space armor, which Allura secretly disapproved of; her mother had taught her to always dress her best when meeting potential allies, and armor did not count. Kolivan met them on the rough stone ledge that served as a docking platform with a respectful nod. “Paladins,” he murmured, “and friends. You are timely. Come, the others are waiting.”

Lizenne had been gazing thoughtfully at the docking cavern, and smiled at him. “I take it that our little stay up at the Shells of Cantus gave your engineers some ideas.”

“The concept has its merits,” Kolivan admitted, and beckoned them toward the jumbled row of dark tunnel mouths that lined the wall behind him. “There are a great many moonlets such as these, and with a little tweaking, they serve our purposes well. I must apologize, though—we have stolen your Weblum egg.”

Lizenne chuckled. “I don't mind. Your need is greater than mine, my Lord Blade, and may it propel us that much closer to victory.”

It was impossible to judge his expression behind his suit's cold-eyed mask, but something about his posture told them that he was relieved that she wasn't going to object. “We can hope. This way; follow me closely, and do not be tempted to explore the side passages, no matter what you might see down them.”

The tunnels were a Minotaur's paradise of twisting passages that connected, interconnected, and even disconnected with great frequency and freedom, and each and every tunnel mouth looked exactly the same. Small light fixtures had been attached seemingly at random around the maze, and every so often, just visible at the far ends of those halls, bait had been planted. They varied widely in appearance. It might be a stack of crates and sacks, usually with one sack that had a tear in one side that revealed something that sparkled. It might be a large control box with lots of little lights blinking temptingly. It might be a mannequin made to look like a captive soldier, kneeling dejectedly with its hands bound behind it in a force-screen cubicle. Sometimes it was just moving shadows, and a recorder playing a loop of a soft conversation.

“Nice,” Pidge said; having spent six months setting booby traps into a pirate ship and then a fortress-moon, she felt herself to be an authority on the subject. “Let me guess—all the other passages lead to deathtraps?”

Kolivan gave her an appreciative glance as he led them toward an opening in the stone that looked no different from any of the others. “All of them do. Certain of the traps are only taken offline when we're expecting guests, and even then, not for long.”

“Cool. I'll want to talk to the architect at some point,” Hunk said. “How's Clarence?”

“He has been of exceptional use,” Kolivan said, and there was a hint of warmth in his voice. “The Order has a number of other mobile forts, but none of them are more than machines, nor do they have his courage or ability to think fast in tight situations. He will be very annoyed that he wasn't here to greet you.”

Hunk groaned. “I'm sorry that we missed that chance, too. I kind of miss him.”

“There will be other chances,” Kolivan promised, “perhaps soon.”

They eventually came to a stretch of featureless wall, a section of which pushed out of the solid stone and slid aside to reveal a narrow doorway at the touch of some hidden control. This led to an airlock, two more blast doors, and finally to a small bare room with a short, broad, and very familiar figure standing guard.

“Drosh!” Zaianne said, very pleased to see a friend again. “How've you been?”

Drosh's dark-furred face split into a fearsome grin. “Busy, m'Lady, just like the rest of us. Somebody had to pick up the slack while your kids were all flat on their backs. We had help this time, which is nice. C'mon in, you all. That Tacrillac's been acting like he's got live bockles up his carapace.”

“The Tacrillacs?” Coran said delightedly. “Why, they were one of Altea's staunchest allies, back in the day! A lovely bunch, purely lovely, and they came up with some of the best force-screen technology that anyone's science had ever discovered!”

“Yeah,” Drosh said, his expression going grim, “they were. They ain't now. After Zarkon cut your boss down, he set about stamping out everything Altean and every single one of their best friends. Without Alfor around to keep his government officials from making dumb mistakes, they sort of conveniently forgot that they were supposed to help out their allies as well as covering their own behinds. When the Tacrillacs called for help, they got nothing. Where did you think that Zarkon got the tech for that big shield around Quolothis, or the one he's got around the Center? The Tacrillacs had to trade it to the Emperor to keep from being wiped out totally, and it was a near thing, too. I know it's been awhile and it ain't entirely your fault, but Kev'ap'Josh is going to want a big apology out of you, Princess. Probably you, too, Coran.”

“What?” Lance blurted. “Why her? It wasn't her fault, she was stuck in a cryopod the whole time!”

Drosh shook his head. “That don't make no difference to a Tacrillac. They're a sort of hive-mind bunch, and they figure that one guy's mistake is _everyone's_ mistake. They ain't big on individuality. Might as well get it over with, eh? C'mon.”

“Oh, dear,” Allura moaned, but followed the burly Blade through the final door.

 

Fortunately for the Alteans in the party, the best way to deliver an Incredibly Tardy But Heartfelt Hive-Wide Apology For Vast Negligence Of A Longstanding Ally In The Face Of Nearly-Certain Extinction to a Tacrillac was to stand on their heads and recite a short poem in an ancient and sacred tongue that sounded, to the uneducated Human ear, like a chicken having a nervous breakdown. Coran managed it with his usual aplomb, but Allura's expression, when she was allowed to stand right way up again, promised seven courses of systematic dismantlement to the first person to so much as crack a smile. It took every drop of heroism in her teammates and every last shred of stoicism in the Blades to refrain from incurring her wrath, but they managed somehow. As for the small group of cadre leaders... well, they were used to this sort of thing. Tacrillacs loved little rituals like these, and all of them had had to perform at least one already to keep the prickly little crustacean happy. Pidge, however, lost all interest in the crablike alien when an old friend came in through a side door.

“ _Tchak!”_ she said happily at the sight of the antelope-horned and bronze-scaled pirate. “What are you doing all the way out here? I thought that you were still out playing with Yantilee.”

Tchak gave her a wily, sharp-toothed smile. “I was, up until a few days ago. 'Round about Sprogsday, Yantilee's folks back on the homeworld had decided that enough was too damned much already, so they freed themselves. Yantilee's got most of the Fleet keeping an eye out for Imperial party-poopers while they get things settled out, so she felt that she could spare me. I've got some old friends and contacts on this side of the cosmos, and Kolivan there needed someone to introduce him to them. Yeah, it was a bit tense at first, but his sunny disposition and sparkling conversation won them over in a flash.”

They all glanced at Kolivan, who currently had less expression than a marble statue. “Tchak,” the Galra admonished quietly, but they could hear the exasperation in his voice.

Tchak gestured soothingly. “Sorry, boss. It was his incredible professionalism that did the trick, really. There are things that his lot of spooks can do that nobody else can, and that's important right now. As for the rest of the party... ah, you've met our designated bottom-feeder there--”

“I am Kev'ap'Josh, and I Dance the Dance of Righteous Insult!” the Tacrillac snapped in a high-pitched, rather nasal voice, his six crab legs tapping furiously on the floor. “I am charged with the duty of finding flaws in plans! You shall perform the Formal Apology For Insulting A Properly Cautious Ally, you _biped,_ you!”

“Put it on my tab, shell-back. We eat things like you where I come from,” Tchack said with a dismissive toss of his horns, causing the Tacrillac to clack its claws menacingly. “Ignore the hexapod, he's only right when we're in session. Speaking of that, this fine lady is known to her adoring followers as Ophion, and to her enemies as Wanted Dead Or Alive. Say hello to the fairy-tale heroes, Ophion.”

Ophion, a rather birdlike female with a crown of emerald feathers and a bandolier of knives slung over her armored torso, cast them an amused look out of brilliant orange eyes. “Hello,” she said in a mellow trill, “I welcome you, Paladins. Are the rumors true, that you have crippled the very Center of the Empire twice?”

“We have,” Allura said firmly, and then smiled. “Once by design and once by misadventure, but one should take one's victories where one can.”

“Especially when they open up all sorts of opportunities for the rest of us,” Tchak snickered and patted a broad, stripy, vaguely reptilian person on the center-left shoulder. “My old friend Tepechwa here and his crowd of smugglers were able to get away with all sorts of fun things after both of those escapades, so much so that his official Imperial designation is Shoot On Sight.”

Tepechwa gurgled humorously in the back of his throat. “Serves 'em right for grabbin' what ain't theirs to start with. Pleased to meet you, folks.”

Allura smiled. “Charmed, I'm sure. And who is that, Captain?”

Tchak looked surprised for a moment, then glanced back over his shoulder. He sobered, and he and the others stepped aside with gestures of respect for the odd figure that had appeared behind them. It was very small, and mostly a sort of silver-spangled red, and it had a single golden eye and a pair of glimmering, glassy butterfly wings that flashed like prisms as they kept the tiny alien at a steady height of about five feet off the floor. It had draped itself in a robe of something like sheer silk, which curled like mist in the air around it. Tchak raised a hand, and the fairylike alien came to rest on his bronze-scaled wrist, and Allura was puzzled to hear Lizenne, Modhri, and Zaianne's hisses of surprise.

“I wasn't aware that there were any of your kind left,” Modhri said in a soft, wondering voice. “Greetings, your Solandrinence.”

“I'll have to ask you all to forget you ever saw Sylerae here,” Tchak said gravely. “Better yet, forget you ever knew her kind existed. There are a few enclaves in a few hidden spots and the Blades have been helping us set up more, but if Haggar ever finds out that there are any of her kind left at all, we're going to have to deal with the other ten planet-busters. Those first two were bad enough.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Got that right, although we'll want to neutralize that fleet sooner or later anyway. Why does the Empire want her people dead?”

“The Iberix are unique in that they exist on two planes of reality at once,” Kolivan said softly. “What you are seeing is actually a small extrusion of a much larger entity upon the physical plane; the rest of her is in the Mindscape. They are powerful mages, and Haggar will not tolerate competition in that arena.”

“Sylerae is... well, not quite an Oracle,” Ophion said carefully. “She Sees what is happening _now,_ at any given place within the Sector, in real-time.”

Zaianne nodded thoughtfully. “Making her invaluable for directing difficult missions. I am grateful that you are willing to help, your Solandrinence.”

Sylerae spoke in a sweet-toned voice, like the chiming of a tiny crystal bell. “Necessity Exists. Causality Must Be Directed Correctly. The Golden Lion's Partnered Self Brings The Perfect Gift.”

Everyone looked at Hunk, who held up a packet with a smug smile. “I made up an assortment of cookies last night. Thought I'd bring some along 'cause, y'know, cookies.”

Drosh brightened up. “Well, if you've got any of the ones that the Captain here has been telling me about—peanut butter, wasn't it?—then they're welcome. Anyone getting too close for comfort yet, Sylerae?”

“No,” chimed Sylerae.

“Good.” Drosh rubbed his hands and grinned hugely. “How 'bout you all get to planning our raids, then. Save me some of those cookies, though. I've missed 'em.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mild Rant Ahead! If you don't wanna read, feel free to ignore it!
> 
> Okay, so I wasn't lucky enough to see the season premiere at Comic Con, but nobody's been particularly careful about spoilers. Shiro is now canon as mlm, which is amazing. I was seriously happy to hear that he was officially part of the lgbtq+ community, especially since back when I was a kid, that would have caused a serious scandal and probably had the show pulled off the air. (Yes, I'm old.) This means fantastic things for representation. However, I've run into something that does NOT excite me. Some of the fandom have started using the existence of Adam as an excuse to invalidate other Shiro Ships. And that is Not Cool. The fact that Shiro and Adam had a good and loving relationship in the past that later ended due to a disagreement over the Kerberos Mission is not an excuse for fans to put down other fans. We all love this series, and we all show our love for this series in different ways. Please everyone, let's remember to be mature respectful adults and ship and let ship. Being passionate about your personal ships is one thing, but being an ass about it is quite another.
> 
> RANT OVER. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND WE WILL NOW RETURN TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED SHENANIGANS!


	4. Preparations

Chapter 4: Preparations

 

“ _Tchak,”_ Tepechwa protested some time later, tapping all three left forefingers on the table, his thick nails making sharp clacking sounds on the metal surface.

“Sorry.”

“Deep breaths, Captain,” Pidge said patiently, “and then pass me another one of the peanut-butter ones... oh, and Sylerae wants one of the thumbprint ones with the trimblat jam filling.”

Everyone paused for a moment as, for the third time in the past few hours, Tchak had to stand up and bend over the cookie box. He closed his eyes, took a few calming breaths, and let the cookies drop back down into their proper container. While he took care not to show it, he was quite excited by the prospect of cracking a whole region free of Imperial control, and his native but untrained talent for telekinesis had fixated on the snacks to express his enthusiasm with. Everyone was just glad that it was a halo of pastry he kept developing; the only other small, light objects available were Ophion's daggers.

“Once we're done here, I'll want to talk to you about that,” Lizenne said, fishing a handful of cookies out of the box and handing them around. “It's a rare talent, and it should be put to good use. Do you think that you can handle the garrison fleet around Dinvashko, Paladins?”

Keith scowled at the icons on the charts. “We should. It's pretty much the same size as the one Lotor had, and even if they've got that new aetheric shield, their regular shields probably won't be any stronger than what we're used to dealing with.”

“We're better attuned to the Lions than we used to be, too,” Pidge said, nibbling on her cookie. “If I have to, I can crack the aetheric black-ice on the command ship and set it on the rest, especially if I've got Voltron backing me up. Any thoughts about that starbase, Allura?”

“I think that if we stick that big sword of ours through their power core, they'll stop being a problem,” Lance said before Allura could speak, earning himself a hard look from that worthy.

“I'd prefer to disable it, if possible, and take it intact,” Allura said thoughtfully. “It is a major communications hub, after all, and it may have information that would be of use. Perhaps if we approached on this vector--” she traced an oblique angle on one chart, “--we could take them by surprise, destroy the command ship, and save your own rare talent for taking the station.”

“We could take it up a notch, actually,” Hunk said, watching as one of his cookies lifted up out of the box all by itself and caught it before it could start circling Tchak's horns again. “Pidge, do you think that you could build your cloaking system into all of the Lions? Make Voltron invisible, I mean.”

Pidge grinned evilly. “You betcha. I've already got the kits set up. We could get it done tonight, if everyone's willing to give me a hand with that. Sure, Allura, we can try to take the station. If everything goes right, we could fix it up like we did with Clarence, and give Kolivan here another birthday present.”

Kolivan smiled. “It would be welcome. I have a team readily available, and can help with securing the station, if someone were to give us a lift.”

Tepechwa raised a hand. “My lads've recently got me some toys that'll make things easier—a dozen Zelcanti Hatchcrackers. Boarding craft, left over from the old Grezzani naval fleet, before the Galra crushed 'em. Brand new, never used, found in a cache in an asteroid field. All we need is a carrier, which my lot don't have. Grezzani boarders are nice, but they're short-range.”

Ophion gestured a negative. “The only ship my cadre had that could carry even half that many was destroyed last year. Kev?”

Kev, and this was the actual Hive-Mind Kev now, not the individual “ap'Josh”, tapped their claw on the table. The crablike alien's voice had become strangely choral, but no less high-pitched and nasal. “Even the largest of our available craft are too small to take all twelve. If those Hatchcrackers are Mark V's, we may be able to carry two per ship, and we don't have six available ships.”

“We can carry them,” Coran said gallantly. “The Castle's shuttle bays are enormous, and mostly empty right now. If our Paladins here can draw the enemy away from the station, there's nothing to say that Zaianne and I can't barnstorm the place a bit. I think that I recall the Grezzani from back in the day. Tall fellows, weren't they, and had some of the best hull-cracking technology available.”

“Not any more,” Ophion said darkly. “They went extinct four thousand, seven hundred and forty-two years ago.”

“Homeworld and two colonies blown to bits and stripped for whatever goodies they had,” Tepechwa rumbled sadly, “and there's always a big bidding war when any of their old tech is discovered and put up for auction. Those dozen Hatchcrackers would've let me retire rich, you know.”

Tchak patted his shoulder. “I know, pal. I gave up a chance to loot a Governor's mansion to be here. Yantilee was about to go after Walmanech, and you know how their fat bastard of a tyrant lives.”

Kolivan surreptitiously brushed crumbs from the front of his suit. “If this goes well, the both of you will have thirteen mansions to choose from. You'll take the cargo, Lizenne? Modhri?”

Lizenne nodded. “If it'll bring us the help we need from the Beronites, I see no problem with returning their holy relics. That was the original agreement anyway, and it is time.”

Modhri snagged another floating cookie before it could escape. “It is indeed, and we'll want to do that as soon as we can, in order to give them time to confirm and reconsecrate those relics. They won't lift a finger, much less a starship, unless those things have been vetted, approved, and cleansed. To summarize, then: First strike on the Telarsh Moonbase two days from now, to concentrate Imperial attention on that System and pull the fleets out of position. While they're busy, Lizenne, Kolivan, and I will secure the help of the Beronites. While we're doing that, the rest of you will head out to Dinvashko and kick up a fuss that will keep the Governors from noticing the inevitable excitement that follows the fulfillment of a genuine prophecy. With communications down over a very large portion of local space, they won't be able to coordinate properly when the uprisings start, which will lend us some considerable advantage.”

“Plus, if we can manage it, subverting that comm station and adding it to the Alliance forces,” Kolivan said, his narrow yellow eyes calculating. “We will do everything possible to obtain that station intact. The Alliance would be able to make great use of another live-ship, particularly one skilled at misinformation.”

Pidge and Hunk glanced at each other, grinned, and chorused,  _“Toys.”_

Modhri sighed, and turned to the silent member of the party, who had been busily licking the trimblat jam out of her cookie with a pair of agile, silvery tongues. “Does this plan meet with your approval, Solandrinent One?”

Sylerae flicked her diamondlike wings and finished off the jam with an unladylike dual slurp. “I See Nothing Obstructing The Path At This Time. I Cannot Predict. I May Only Say That All Seems Auspicious. I Must Say: Take Care. The Probability Of Surprises—For Whom, I Cannot Say—Is Very High. I Stand Ready To Give Aid In Battle. These Are Very Good Cookies.”

Hunk flushed with pleasure at this compliment, and Allura smiled. “They are, yes. We are in agreement, gentlebeings? Very good. Let us call a recess so that we can speak of private matters, and then we should go and prepare ourselves for the first strike.”

“Sounds good, Miss,” Tchak said, standing up and stretching out his shoulders, and then catching one last cookie as it made figure-eights around his horns. “Lizenne, you were going to tell me how to control this...”

She smiled, accepting the cookie from him. “I can certainly show you a few techniques.”

There was a rattle from the Kev Hivemind as they flexed ap'Josh's joints. “We wish you luck with that. Tchak can be very stubborn about some things. Ah. And we see that he's been teasing the ap'Josh unit. Keep doing that, if you would, Captain, we sent him along because we find him hard to tolerate, despite his courage. Mockery serves well to defuse his pride. We will withdraw now; this body needs to feed and refresh itself.”

“Go ahead,” Tchak said agreeably.

Kev'ap'Josh went very still for a moment, and then the Tacrillac quivered all over as the ap'Josh individual reclaimed control of his body. He had barely more than a few seconds in which to give Tchak a fulminating glare before his body made demands that his mind could not ignore. Buzzing furiously all the way, he scuttled out of the room, presumably in the direction of the facilities.

“I'm never going to get used to seein' that,” Tepechwa sighed. “Coran, you and your lot checked out long before the Grezzani did, and I don't think you'll know much about their boarding craft. Ophion, you studied these folks in class, once. Think you can help me explain to him how Hatchcrackers work?”

Ophion smiled at Coran. “I can certainly try, although my studies focused more on folklore than anything else.”

Coran twiddled his mustache. “Do your people still tell our old tales of heroism and derring-do? Why, I'd love to compare legends, Madame, and see how far time has taken you from the originals.”

She gestured a negative. “It's not that. My Senior Thesis was on whether or not the Alteans had actually existed, rather than being a bunch of motheaten old stories to amuse hatchlings with—much like the tales of Voltron itself.”

“Oh,” Coran said, deflating a little. “Well, at least you've had your arguments confirmed, I should hope.”

Tepechwa gave him a reptilian smile. “Nah. She argued against you existin' at all. Damn silly story, she said. Witch-Kings and giant robots, what a laugh! Fossilized propaganda put about by the Galra so's they've got an excuse to grab up other folks' planets and rip 'em to bits. Fate plays dumb jokes on a person sometimes, eh? C'mon, man, we've gotta show you some ship specs.”

Sighing dejectedly, Coran followed them out of the room.

Tchak chuckled. “Events plus time equals legend, and legends attract naysayers and boring scholars to them like thlits to a moon-lamp. Shall we find a private corner, Lady?”

“We should,” she said, rescuing another floating cookie, “and deliver a handful or two of these to poor Drosh, who has so faithfully guarded the door for us. Want one?”

Tchak glanced down at the two dark-brown pastries in her hand. “Not those, no. They smell weird. What did the Paladin call them again?”

“'Space Chocolate'. Gwassop spice, I believe, and Lanteschan dira as a sweetener.” Lizenne sniffed at the cookies. “Quite tasty, actually, and I would very much like to try the Earthly version.”

Tchak grunted in distaste. “Nah. I'll stick to the mettic-paste ones, which we'd better grab some of for Drosh before Kolivan eats them all. Have you ever seen a Korbexan Galra pout? It's heartbreaking, it really is.”

Fortunately for Drosh, Kolivan had already drawn Keith and Zaianne aside and wasn't guarding the cookie box, allowing Lizenne to scoop out the last of the peanut-butter cookies. As she passed that trio, she heard Keith ask, “Have you found any trace of him?”, and paused a moment to listen.

Kolivan sighed. “No. There has been no unusual activity in the areas we know about, or in the ones we've been watching. Since your last visit to the Center, security has been tightened tenfold; no one is allowed there who has not been assigned there by trusted authorities, and all new hires are scrutinized by Haggar herself. We cannot get an agent in, and we dare not try at this time; the Ghamparva are on high alert in many Sectors, and there simply aren't enough of us to force the issue. I am sorry.”

Lizenne heard Keith's faint moan of chagrin and her heart ached for him. That poor boy! He had grown up essentially alone, a terrible thing for Galra cubs and Human children alike, and then to lose the one elder brother that he'd been able to adopt, and to such monstrous enemies...

“Poor kid,” Tchak muttered softly, drawing her away. “Varda told us about Shiro, you know, and I'm a little upset that I never got to meet him. He sounds like a good guy to have around.”

Lizenne puffed a faint, exasperated breath. “He is an excellent fellow, but he's one of those pure-hearted, heroic sorts that will throw themselves into the breach without hesitation, even though the loss of them will do even more damage to their teams than a defeat in battle will. Well, with any luck, you will meet him in the near future. He is, for many reasons, far too valuable to allow to die. Not just yet, anyway.”

Tchak gave her a puzzled look. “How do you figure? People die all the time. Even heroes.”

“It has to do with the nature of evil,” Lizenne replied, “and how it reacts to its true opposite. In many ways, it has less choice in that matter than the rest of us do, which is why I am perfectly willing to have that ridiculous little Unilu around, to teach them that purity of heart does not grant a person the strength of ten. The same result may be handily achieved by one slightly tarnished fellow with a crowbar.”

Tchak snickered evilly. “Or a lockpick, or a codebreaker, or even a good sales pitch. I've met that Unilu. Nice choice.”

Lizenne smiled and laid a hand on the keypad, opening the door. “He is, yes. Pidge has excellent taste in friends.”

 

Keith thumped back down into his chair, frustration and red rage at his inability to do anything to help his best friend eating at his heart like acid. All of his instincts were screaming at him to go and break some heads, but he had no idea of where to start. When he found the right heads, however... oh, when he found them, they would _burn..._

A long, strong arm draped itself around his shoulders and squeezed gently, and he found himself pressed up against a broad torso that smelled slightly of allspice and border collie. He looked up and saw that Kolivan and his mother had vanished, and that Modhri was holding him close with a concerned look in his golden eyes.

“Easy now, you were starting to steam,” Modhri murmured quietly. “It's hard, I know, but we are doing all that we can. The Blades as well, and Zaianne has put the word out to the various resistance groups.”

Keith heaved a shuddering breath, forcing his emotions back under control. The fire that had awoken within him in that temple arena back on Boniro, that had burned Kelezar clean of hexes and had made him immune to any more (and Keith would grant that immunity to Shiro if— _when—_ they found him again) had never really stopped burning. Most of the time it cooked away quietly in his heart, a well-behaved flame like a lantern or a large candle, but whenever he was upset, it threatened to flare up and burst into reality and scorch the hell out of whatever got too close. Usually through him, which had already browned more of his undershirts than he liked. Lizenne's focusing techniques were helping, but it was so hard to control sometimes... unless Lance was backing him up. He didn't like to admit how he felt about that, even to himself, but there it was. It had felt _good_ to combine powers with his least-favorite teammate, he could feel the two forces spinning together like a wheel, balancing each other perfectly. Like the yin-yang symbol that his father had hung up in the bathroom back at home, and he knew enough about the symbolism to really not want to think about that right now. Finding Shiro was far more important, but right now, just for now, it was a great comfort to lean his head on Modhri's shoulder and watch his teammates feeding the fairylike Iberix jam-filled cookies. The strange little alien seemed to have a bottomless appetite for trimblat jam, and had already cleaned out at least six.

Keith noticed the odd, rather wistful look on his adoptive uncle's face as he gazed upon that interesting scene. “I take it that you know those from somewhere?”

Modhri sighed and held him closer. “The Iberix have been known to the Galra for a very long time. Long before we achieved spaceflight, as a matter of fact. Their dual nature allows them to travel through space without needing starships, and they gravitate to peoples who use magic. They used to seek out and ally themselves with the greatest witches, so long as those witches followed kindly ways, or so the old tales said. There are many, many ancient tales about great heroes who worked with and received aid from the Iberix, and my parents used to tell them to me and my brothers every night when we were small. Precious memories indeed, Keith, and I will make my own children a gift of such, should I ever get around to having some.”

Something twisted sharply inside Keith's heart; he'd forgotten that Modhri had suffered losses of his own. “How long ago did Zarkon try to wipe them out?”

“I'm not sure.” Modhri rubbed at his eyes and shook his head sadly. “I believe that they were among the first to feel the Empire's wrath, for Zarkon and Haggar had plenty of rivals for power, back when the Empire was very new. I expect that any powerful witch or aetheric practitioner at that time could see very clearly what those two really were, and tried to stop them before they could consolidate their power. Alas, they were not successful, and a very great many innocents died. I grew up being told that the Iberix were nothing more than fantasy. I still have very clear memories of my brothers and I playing at being bold adventurers, with Lizenne playing the part of the Iberix, and of the time when I went nearly blind with rage when one of her elder cousins told me that those lovely little people didn't exist. He told me that I could search the Universe for thousands of years before I would ever see a single Iberix. I swore to prove him wrong, and for years I kept my eyes open at every port and market, watching for them. Now I am looking at the real thing, and I cannot help but think that it was worth the wait.”

Keith managed a smile. “Even if it's gotten jam all over its robe?”

“Especially if it has gotten jam all over its robe.” Modhri chuckled and leaned back in his seat. “Every time a myth gets jam all over its clothing, that ties it more firmly to reality, so that sentimental fools like me can rejoice in the fact that a childhood tormentor was entirely wrong. After all, if one miserable bully is found out to be lying through his teeth about something so important, then the pompous proclamations of far greater bullies may be treated as the marsh gas that they are.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Keith allowed, watching Hunk gallantly offering the jam-smeared Iberix a napkin. “Do you think that she'll be able to tell me where Shiro is?”

Modhri shook his head sadly. “If all five of you, the Lions, the dragons, and Lizenne can't do it, then I doubt that she'll have any better luck. Indeed, it would be extremely unwise if Sylerae were to go nosing about. If Haggar were to spot her--”

“I know,” Keith groaned, “our allies can't afford to lose her. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, used the T-shirt to wash the Lion, then Red had robot kittens on it.” He smirked at Modhri's snort of amusement, then sobered again. “Do you think that we'll ever get him back?”

“I have no doubt whatsoever,” Modhri said with a calm assurance that made Keith stare at him. “If Zarkon and Haggar do indeed have him, they will not be able to resist using him against us somehow, and then we will take him back. I have no idea of how any of that will happen, but it will happen, and I place my faith entirely in you, my wife, your mother, and the rest of our family to respond appropriately.”

“How can you say that?” Keith demanded, pulling away from Modhri's embrace. “We've got huge odds stacked against us, and all it'll take is one lucky shot on the enemy's side to wipe us all out!”

Modhri fixed him with a solemn look. “I trust the Lions. They know what we are up against. They have _lived_ what we are up against. The challenges they faced ten thousand years ago are much the same as what we all are facing now. They made a number of very bad mistakes in the past, and they have learned from them. They spent ten millennia contemplating those mistakes, Keith. This time, they have not repeated those poor decisions, and they have the backing of strange and potent peoples that simply were not available in the old days. You are still unsure of yourself, and that is natural in one so young, but always remember that the red Lion chose you. Out of trillions of others in this great and starry Universe, she chose you. It was not a random choice. If she has so much faith in your abilities and potential, can you not have faith in her good judgment?”

Keith stared at him, then slumped back down, elbows resting on the table and his head in his hands. “I wish that it was that easy. I've had a lot of people telling me that I wasn't good enough, ever since I was little. Now, I have to be the best, or the whole Universe dies. It's a hard adjustment to make, you know.”

“I know, and I've suffered the same,” Modhri gave him a smile with more than a touch of mischief in it. “Nonetheless, I have achieved more than my detractors could ever have dreamed of doing themselves, and I aim to achieve more yet. Pidge has made a habit of doing the impossible with computers. Hunk can do things with engine parts that boggle the mind. Allura's talent is so potent that Haggar herself cannot steal it. Even Lance has defied death to save a friend, and you have rescued, cleansed, and safeguarded a genuine Prince! You've all had your fortunes told by a true Oracle, and not one of those predictions have been less than encouraging.”

“None of them were about Shiro,” Keith said stubbornly.

“Yes, and you should have realized why long ago,” Modhri waved an admonishing finger at him. “Like all such abilities, Precognition is an aetheric talent. Haggar has shielded Shiro so thoroughly against detection that even those soul-bonded to him cannot tell more than that he still lives. Loliqua simply couldn't See him, and therefore couldn't tell what was going to happen. This tells me, although I am hardly an expert, that the future is still up for grabs. Will you lose heart now, and be unable to succeed when he is finally revealed to us?”

“I...” Keith said uncertainly, and stopped when he felt the red Lion roar in defiance. There was fire in that sound, and the fire that lived within him flared up in answer. He drew strength from that, and squared his shoulders. “I won't. Those miserable creeps might have him now, but they won't keep him, and sure as hell we won't let them have the Lions!”

Modhri smiled to hear the iron in his voice. “Good. Hold on to that. Trust your Lion, and trust the gift that she's given you. Nothing is impossible for any of you, particularly when you work together.”

Keith shifted a little uncomfortably, recalling the feeling of Lance's talents meshing with his. “I guess. Thanks, Modhri.”

Modhri patted his shoulder with a gentle hand. “Anytime, Keith.”

 

Keith had no time to worry over the next two days, for the preparations for the raid took up all of his energy and attention. Just helping Pidge to rig his Lion with the invisibility system had worn him out, and he wasn't sure that he liked being told that the Nantileeri were better mechanics than he was. Not that she was wrong; he was quite proficient with doing maintenance and repairs on his Dad's old desert-speeder, but most space tech was beyond him. No, he'd leave the mechanics to her and to Hunk, who were frighteningly good at that sort of thing. Coran, in the meantime, had been having problems of his own. The Grezzani Hatchcrackers had not, in fact, been Mark V's. They were Mark VII's, a series so new at the time of their manufacture that they'd only once been deployed against the Galra, and had probably been the reason why the Emperor had lost patience with them and had brought out the planet-busters. They were huge things and mightily-armored, with massive, beaklike prows that could simply bite a hole in the side of a battleship and make its own hatches that way. Each one had been designed to carry twenty Grezzani troops in full battle-armor along with two hovertanks as backup; this translated into about fifty Marmorans, rebels, and pirates each, since the battlesuits and hovertanks had apparently been sold separately. Fancy as these craft were, they were very large and awkwardly-shaped, and stowing them in a docking bay that had been designed for the sleek, compact craft that Alteans had preferred was difficult.

Hunk and Pidge had also insisted upon fitting the _Chimera Rising_ with an invisibility system, since that brave ship would soon be making a dangerous journey of its own. The Beronite people lived in a small stellar cluster right in the middle of the Selphuro Sector, an area very rich in certain rare elements that the Empire valued, and thus was heavily populated and patrolled by the enemy. Modhri, Lizenne, and Kolivan would be heading right into the heart of it. This was necessary, Lizenne told Keith when he objected to their going alone.

“The Pael'Banar Relics are extremely sacred,” Lizenne told him gravely as they watched the screens in the _Chimera's_ bridge, where a trio of Marmorans were bringing a large, armor-plated crate into her ship on a hover-pallet. “So much so that they may not be exposed to any light and air that are not already made holy by at least ten years' worth of prayer and ceremony. The Basilica of Nemorte is their rightful home, and it is both the figurative and literal center of the Beronites' entire civilization, and I want to make as good an impression as I can with those people. They're a very pacifistic bunch, by and large, but they can be lethal when aroused. The High Nomora and the Council of Avars allowed me to take the Relics from their rightful place only because I fit the requirements of an ancient prophecy, and I will be expected to follow the rules and laws exactly.”

“What prophecy was that?” Keith asked, “And where do Modhri and Kolivan come into it?”

Lizenne smiled at his worried expression. “It's quite a good one, proclaimed by the Prophet Brecrell in the Tauquen Era, back in the Century of the Chipped Spoon. The Year of the Pessimist's Cup, I believe, although the exact date is unclear. Roughly one thousand, two hundred and eighty-four years ago. Loosely translated from the Olbanric Scriptures, it goes: _'And in the Later Days, when the Great Star of Ulnora is in the House of Amaranthine Light, there will come a great woe unto the People. The skies shall cloud and stars will die, and worlds shall be cracked like eggs and drained dry of their Essence. For many years shall the People groan beneath the hungers of this conqueror. Do not lose hope, O my People! For salvation comes from unlikely sources, and a woman comes from among the conqueror's kindred to safeguard that which is held Most Holy. On the Day of Entry, when the Great Star of Ulnora ascends to the House of Receding Shadows shall she come. She will seem young, but she will be of the Blessed; give unto her the Hui, the Ettola, the Yuloquan, the Guipporo, and the Xiall, that she may hold them away from the conqueror's clutches. Fear not that she will betray you, for she will return them when the Great Star of Ulnora stands at the peak of the House of Burning Amber, and she will bear also with her a Sacred Blade. Two shall follow her, a Disciple of Love and a Disciple of War, and two Great Beasts shall guard them. Behold, they shall place themselves between the Holy and the profane, and the People must follow them into the stars themselves to fulfill the Pact, for this was promised thousands of years before, when the Five Great Ones gave aid to Nemorte Herself when the world was threatened by the Devouring Evil. Accept the Mark of the Five, and even the greatest Fiends of the Void cannot stand against you.'”_

Lizenne chuckled at Keith's perplexed expression. “Lovely bit of verse, isn't it? I looked up their history in the Yerintol Archives. Nemorte was a real person, and she managed to get one of Voltron's prior teams to help out when a neighboring race, the Aloqbeth, tried to conquer their world. Voltron kicked the stuffing out of that repellent bunch of marauders, and Nemorte swore that she and her followers would repay the Paladins in full, should Voltron ever need their aid.”

“But that was ten thousand years ago!” Keith protested.

“A little more than that,” Lizenne corrected him, “but to the religiously-inclined, the deeds of yesterday are the deeds of tomorrow, and the years are immaterial when a sacred vow is involved. Particularly if it's a vow sworn by the focus of the Faith itself, and Nemorte has become a very popular deity over the years. She was apparently a delightful woman in life who cared deeply for her family and her people, but could turn very nasty whenever someone threatened them. Her people emulate her as much as they are able, and they are very scientifically advanced these days. They buy their continued existence from the Empire with their innovations, as a matter of fact, which are more valuable—barely—than the mineral wealth of their planets. It's high time that they broke free of that all-consuming parasite.”

Keith smiled. “And if we introduce them to the Olkari?”

She grinned back. “Then, my dear young man, there will be _fireworks._ Our greatest asset is our habit of bringing people together, and the combination of those brilliant minds with new ideas from all corners of the Universe will be our greatest weapon.”

Keith nudged her in the ribs with an elbow. “And having a huge common enemy helps.”

She sighed. “It does. How are your own preparations going, Keith?”

Keith frowned, watching the Marmorans move their precious cargo into the storage bay and lash it down. “We're ready. All the Lions have the invisibility system now, and Hunk thinks that Voltron will be able to stay invisible for as much as five minutes now, when they're all hooked together and their systems are aligned. Coran's finally managed to get those Hatchcrackers positioned so that we don't have to worry about them getting stuck in the bay doors. Pidge tried to convince the Castle to accept the cloaking system too, but it won't let her install one.”

“It's a proud old thing,” Lizenne said absently, her eyes on the screens.

Keith shook his head. “Too proud. If I were a warship, I'd want every advantage I could get.”

Lizenne chuckled. “It's also a palace, and palaces are all about display. How would a king get people to take him seriously if he didn't live in a palace? How many of your royals have delivered their inspiring speeches from the roof of a mud hut, I wonder? Leave it be, Keith. I'm sure that it has its reasons.”

“Yeah,” Keith sighed. “Captain Tchak and the others are already in position, and everything else is ready to go. It's all up to us, now.”

“You'll do fine,” Lizenne murmured fondly, seeing the nerves that hummed under Keith's apparent calm, and she rubbed his back comfortingly with one hand. “Even if the enemy comes up with a surprise for you, you will rise to meet it. Remember, the Galra Military is not used to dealing with their equals in power, and their own hubris will be as a second sword in your hand. Voltron was designed and built specifically to deal with what we are facing now.”

He nodded, feeling the presence of his Lion as a comforting warmth in his mind. “I'm a little worried about you guys, is all.”

She smirked, and Keith was absurdly cheered by the proud cast to her expression and the fierce, challenging look in her eyes. Kelezar had called her the “cub of the Wild” once, and she looked like a predator with prey in sight. “I suppose that someone has to be. I am confident in my own strengths, and in Modhri's, and in Kolivan's. I have a very good ship that a very strong pair of Technomages have been improving. Tilla and Soluk will be with us as well, and while I cannot guarantee success, we will certainly make a spirited attempt at it. Who knows? Perhaps the Relics themselves might grant us an extra grain or two of luck. Have courage, my magnificent nephew, and share it with your pack as they share theirs with you.”

 

A short time later, Keith reflected that it wasn't courage that they were sharing, it was nerves. They hadn't had a real pitched battle since Shomakti Station (the Stronghold didn't count since the pirates had done most of the real work, or so Pidge had said) and were all as tense as harp strings as a result. They would have help, of course; Tchak was on hand awaiting their signal, along with Tepechwa, Ophion, and the Marmorans, and Coran was eager to try out his new fleet of Hatchcrackers. At the moment, he and his fellow Paladins were approaching their target incognito, riding undercover as part of the cargo in a drone trade caravan and wrapped up in what Hunk had referred to as “space tarps”. Keith didn't know what they were made of, but every scanner that Pidge had pointed at them had registered her Lion as two hundred tons of meteoric iron. Lance had been slightly miffed about having to pass off five of the most valuable machines in the universe as cheap cargo, but Keith wasn't going to complain. No bored customs agent would raise a stink about a load of unrefined space junk. Not that they would be showing trade manifests to the authorities, anyway. They were on the final approach to Telarsh Moonbase now, and would be opening up a celebratory six-pack of whup-ass very soon.

“Guys, check it out,” Pidge whispered over her comm, and a new image popped up on his forward screen that showed dozens of purple ships. “They're not supposed to be here. We're going to have to change the plan a little.”

Allura hummed thoughtfully. “That's not Lotor's fleet. Where did they come from, and more importantly, are they shielded?”

There was a pause, and then Pidge humphed peevishly. “Yup, and the biggest ship in the middle there has a double layer. Well, we'll deal with it the old-fashioned way. Sleek-looking thing, isn't it?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said, and Keith could hear a touch of avarice in his voice. “Check out the streamlining on the thing, and the big engine pods. That sucker can really move—I'll bet it can get to where it's going practically before it leaves, and it's really long-range. It's almost a shame to bust it up. Hey, guys, if we bust it up right, can we leave the engines intact so I can have a look at them?”

“We'll have to get back to you on that, Hunk,” Lance said tensely, “I'm more interested in the guns. Those are some big guns, guys.”

“Big guns aren't a new problem,” Keith said, equally tense. “We can dodge big guns. If we can get close enough, guns stop being useful. Primary target's still the base, and we need to take that out without dropping moon-chunks onto the planet. Any ideas, Captain?”

Tchak's voice came distantly over their comms a moment later. _“We're going to have to worry about those ships first, since they're mobile and the base isn't, and that fleet's worth worrying about. I'll send down my best long-gunner and see if we can't take out the base's comm node to keep them from calling for any other help. You're going to have enough trouble just dealing with that fleet.”_

“No kidding?” Pidge asked.

“ _None,”_ Tchak replied darkly. _“Tepechwa says that those smaller ships are the usual cruisers and frigates, but that big one's a bit unusual. Crovanx-class heavy carrier, he says, very new, very fancy, very well-armed, and they're built for getting really big important stuff to where it needs to be in a screaming hurry. There were only about twenty or so of them when his guys checked last... oh. Tepechwa says that he wants the wreck when you're done, guys, and that you're not to chop it up too fine. There are a lot of folks out there who would really like a look at its systems.”_

“Mine,” Hunk grumped. “I call dibs.”

“Focus, Hunk,” Allura sighed. “Keith, Coran's Hatchcrackers will deal with the base once we have seen to the fleet. What I want to know is what that carrier's cargo is. We have made a bit of a fuss out here lately, and that ship is giving me a very bad feeling.”

Keith sucked in a deep breath to calm his own twitching nerves. “We'll find out soon enough. We're almost to the starting point now. There's the base.”

The others went quiet as Telarsh moonbase hove into view to their left. The moon itself was a small, irregular, sort of potato-shaped chunk of lunar pumice, and the base itself was a low, broad, dark installation that had been more or less built into the moon itself, rather than on the surface. There was a large docking ring and numerous structures meant for the servicing and supplying of large spacecraft, but the base itself rather resembled an enormous palmetto bug. It must have resembled something else to his teammate, for Lance chortled and began to sing quietly under his breath, “Dum-dum-dum dum-da-dum, dum-da-dum... _Dum_ -dum-dum dum-de-dum, dum-de-dum. DUM-dum-DUM-da da-da-diddle-dum, dum-dum-da-da-diddle-dum--”

Hunk and Pidge burst into fits of strangled snickers. Keith only groaned, and then growled, “The Imperial March? Really? All the geek points, Lance.”

“What?” Lance protested unrepentantly. “They're an evil Empire, Keith, it's traditional. We've even got real rebels backing us up this time.”

“ _I'm not even going to ask what they're going on about,”_ Tchak said disgustedly. 

“ _It involves a classic vid trilogy where they come from; Zaianne dug them out of Lizenne's files for me just a week or so ago,”_ Coran said, although he didn't sound terribly impressed. _“A decent example of screen art, I suppose, but a bit poorly-scripted in spots. Now, if you want a real drama, you needn't look any further than the great Drenandro Boptemius's seminal work,_ The Prince of Glastor. _A masterpiece series of seven vids, each more heart-pounding than all the rest, with none other than the incredible Corucas Dinwiddie as the Prince. He was a second cousin of mine, and very talented both on and off the stage. Why, the interpretive dances that he performed at parties alone--”_

Tchak made a rude noise. _“Tell me later, man, preferably after I've had a mug or six of horath. If I'm still conscious, I might even take you seriously. All right, Paladins, I think that we're within range. Confirm, and launch.”_

“Confirmed,” Allura said. “Releasing the tarps now. We'll signal you once the main threats are dealt with.”

“ _Acknowledged,”_ Keith heard Tchak reply cheerfully as the tarp peeled away from the red Lion, _“Good luck out there.”_

“Thank you,” Allura said politely. _“Launch!”_

It was with an intense sensation of mingled exhilaration and relief that Keith sent his Lion boosting through space, and he privately exulted in the speed and strength it gave him. Distantly, he heard Pidge ask if they should try out their new cloaking system.

“Leave it for now,” Allura said, sounding very suspicious, “let's see what's in that cargo ship first.”

“You really are itchy about that thing, aren't you?” Hunk asked.

Allura hissed angrily. “I feel Haggar's power all over it, even at this distance. It reeks of her, and I hate it! I'm surprised that you can't feel it yourselves.”

“Huh,” Lance said thoughtfully. “Nope, can't say that I do. Keith? Hunk? Pidge?”

Hunk and Keith had to respond with a negative, but Pidge had a different view. “I think that I know what she's talking about, guys. We've both had more exposure to Haggar's power than you have. Allura and I might have gotten sensitized to it. I've got an idea—let's do a quick bond-check and see what we can see.”

“All right,” Keith said and forced himself to relax, turning his attention inward to see the warm place within. He picked up the others immediately, rose, sapphire, emerald, and gold, each intensified by their Lion's link, but there was also a fog of something that looked horrifically toxic _over there,_ surrounding a ghastly scrawl of livid purple and jagged black, all tangled up with a thread of something greenish. Hunk yelped in surprise, and Keith and the others echoed that with gagging noises and other sounds of distaste.

“That's awful!” Hunk said disgustedly. “I mean, OMG, that's bad! She's not there, but she's done something in there that's _really_ bad, and it's sort of alive!”

The others went quiet, a certain suspicion forming in their minds. “You don't think...” Lance said hesitantly.

“It might be,” Allura said nervously. “Either way, we must be ready for anything. Evasive action, team—they've spotted us.”

Indeed, the ships of the fleet were turning toward them in order to bring their guns to bear, and drone fighters were pouring out of them in swarms. Keith gripped the control beams hard, and roared along with his Lion when he heard Allura command them to attack.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kolivan is a cookie hog. We have declared this and thus it is so.
> 
> We've also said this often, but it bears repeating. Thank you to everyone who has left a comment or kudos on our fic. It's what encourages us to keep writing, even on days where we'd rather just stay in bed and let the world burn. Without all of you and your kind words this story would never have gotten this far and Spanch and I wouldn't have had nearly as much fun.


	5. Surprises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just getting the next chapter out there before season 7 drops! Not that this fic is anything close to canon compliant at this point. XD Enjoy!

Chapter 5: Surprises

 

Emperor Zarkon, master of most of the known universe, commander-in-chief of the greatest military that had ever been or would be, the eternal monarch, he whose merest word was law, was starting to get very bored with certain of his lesser officials. Boredom was a major problem for those blessed with (or, on bad days, afflicted with) immortality; after the first couple of thousand years, one reached a certain mental plateau. Having lived long enough to see the natural cycles of historical imperative and societal drift, one's emotions leveled out, and very little could arouse them after that. After three thousand years, surprises, even in so large a realm, became very rare. Threats—real threats, ones to his own personal well-being, not just the usual hate mail—were so rare that they were anticipated eagerly. They were challenges, something to get the blood moving of a morning, and there was enough of the old predator left in Zarkon to relish that feeling now and again. In a way, he was enjoying the cat-and-mouse game that the Paladins were presenting him with. He had no doubt that he would win in the end, of course, but the game itself was always far more important than the prize. It had been so long since he'd had a truly worthy opponent...

He shifted on his throne and wondered if he should borrow Haggar's pet project for a workout. The creature was almost ready for its intended purpose and still had a bit of fight left in it. Perhaps he should wait until she'd finished with it instead, and try his strength against its final form. Either way, if the two plaintiffs in the territorial dispute that he was judging at the moment didn't stop whining and get to the point soon, he'd have both of them sent to the arena and assign new Governors for the Systems in question. Perhaps he should do precisely that; Governor Pokram was ruthless, ambitious, and tyrannical. Governor Zlan's foremost attribute was that of avarice. They were currently fighting over an uninhabited solar system whose asteroid belts were chock-full of certain rare and very valuable elements, and which sat almost directly on the border between them. Neither man had ever learned to share. Zlan also had a harsh, piercing, petulant voice that was starting to get on his nerves. A faint hiss at his side told him that Haggar was at the end of her patience with these two fools as well. Zarkon was just about to see to the permanent silencing of both of them when a sudden movement by the doors caught his attention, and Zlan's whining faltered as Pendrash's new aide came trotting in.

“Forgive the interruption, your Majesty,” the young man said, dropping smoothly to one knee before his sovereign. “We have just received a communication from the fleet stationed at Telarsh Moonbase. The Lions are there, and are attacking the fleet.”

The Emperor's head came up, a tingle of excitement running through his jaded nerves, and he heard a faint, triumphant _hah_ from Haggar. “Show me,” he commanded, momentarily toying with the idea of telling the two Governors that they now owed their lives and freedom to Pendrash's efficient underling. The young soldier murmured a few words to one of Zarkon's own aides, and a few seconds later, a large screen snapped into being before the throne, and everyone stared in wonder at the view of the Lions in action.

They were beautiful, in their way, Zarkon thought, his hands aching to hold the control beams again and remembering how it felt to fly with complete confidence in the black Lion's cockpit. The speed, the maneuverability, the versatility, the sheer power of their weapons; no other fighting craft could match them, then or now. On the whole, the current pilots weren't bad. Very much like Zarkon's own team, back in the early years of their partnership—talented, but lacking in experience. He chuckled as drone fighters tried and failed to bring them down. “What are the odds?” he murmured quietly to Haggar, who was smiling like a large predator with easy prey in sight. “And here I'd thought that we would have to chase them around half of the cosmos before we could present them with your little gift. Instead, they deliver themselves up to us.”

Haggar snorted, a quick, satisfied sound. “What does it matter? They would have faced it sooner or later, and this saves us some time and trouble. They've chosen the least of the three to fight; it will be interesting to see how their skills have improved since they faced the last one, and this time they will have no outside aid.”

Zarkon humphed. “The third is ready, then?”

She nodded, bringing up a crackling black-amethyst ball of light in one hand, studying the screen with malicious intent. “Oh, yes. I shall activate it once I have seen the first two battles. That way, if necessary, I will be able to make... improvements.”

Zarkon straightened in his seat and when he spoke again, there was an eager note in his voice that made the two Governors cringe. “Do that. Oh, yes, do that. Release the first, Haggar. Let us see how they fare against this product of your Art.”

Haggar's smile had everyone else in the room backing away in a cold sweat. Her hand clenched sharply around the ball of light, and a few seconds later, the running lights on the Crovanx-class heavy carrier flickered in response. Slowly, ominously, the huge cargo doors in the belly of the ship swung open, spilling a strange object out into the void...

 

“Whoa! Guys, did you feel that?” Hunk asked suddenly, dodging an ion beam from one of the support ships.

Pidge, similarly engaged, snarled a curse. “Haggar! That was Haggar! I'd know that stink bomb anywhere!”

“I agree,” Allura said grimly, slashing through the hullplate of a heavy cruiser. “Just what has she done--”

“ _Guys!”_ Lance yelped, “Guys, check out the cargo carrier!”

“ _Incoming!”_ Keith yelled. “It's a Robeast!”

Fully three-quarters of the massive supercargo carrier must have been taken up by its hold, for a thing not much smaller than that had just exited that enormous cavity. It was dark, and narrow, and looked at first glance like a bundle of huge hosepipes, all joined together at a bulging, oval-shaped central nexus. The other Galra ships ceased fire and hurried to get out of the way as the monster activated, lines and bars of livid ruby light snaking its way along the thing's length like lightning... or like veins. The hosepipe-like limbs separated, twisting in the void around it like a nest of snakes, the whole thing resembling a creature that had given Earthly seafarers nightmares for centuries.

“A giant squid?” Lance said incredulously, “That crazy witch is trying to C'Thulhu us to death?”

“Oh, great, now I want calamari,” Hunk grumbled.

The Princess puffed an exasperated breath. “Hunk, how can you think of food at a time like this? That creature is revolting!”

“So are a lot of Earth's sea creatures. And Elder Gods,” Lance rebutted easily, “besides, I miss calamari, too. And anyway, if an Elder God wants to be taken seriously, he shouldn't manifest as something delicious.”

“Mmm, C'Thushi,” Hunk said, putting the cap on it. “Look out guys, I think it's seen us.”

The writhing tentacles snapped out straight, like the spokes of a wheel, and gleaming circular saw blades appeared at the end of each one. Bloody light flared, and suddenly the Robeast was after them, blades describing lethal arcs as it traveled far faster than any of them had expected.

“Whoa-whoa-whoa, buzzsaw squid! Buzzsaw squid!” Hunk yelped, throwing his Lion into a series of evasive maneuvers, and yelled again as he caught a glancing blow from one blade that sent the yellow Lion tumbling.

Keith flashed past the monster, sending a lance of fire raking over the body of the thing; this served to distract it from Hunk, but it now had its attention focused on him. The red Lion's attack hadn't done much damage, either. “Hunk, you okay? I could use some help here, guys!”

“I'm okay, but that was a bad hit,” Hunk responded a little shakily. “Seriously don't let that thing touch you, everybody.”

“Keep your distance, then, and attack from all sides,” Allura said decisively. “Pidge, can you do anything with that creature?”

“Not without forming Voltron,” she said in a sick voice. “It's shielded, and if I tried to break it without help, the effort would flatten both me and my Lion. And Haggar's... she's done some really bad things to whatever that Robeast used to be. Besides, guys, I'm not good with living things yet, and I've been warned not to try it while in a fight. This thing still sort of counts.”

The others had no time to reply, for the thing was closing in on the red Lion, and they soon had their hands full trying to drive it off. Like all of the other Robeasts that they had encountered so far, the thing was horribly single-minded and all but ignored their efforts.

“Get some distance, people!” Allura commanded, “We can't get a clear shot at it from so short a range. Lance, can you slow it down with that ice ray of yours?”

“Give me some space, and I'll try,” he responded gamely, although he never got that opportunity.

The moment that the Lions were out of the Robeast's striking range, the buzzsaws flickered out. Each tentacle snapped straight out from the body, the tips opened up into six points, and it shot showers of bright bolts that homed in directly on the Lions that forced them into frantic evasive maneuvers.

“Seeker pulses!” Allura ground out, flinching as her Lion shook and jerked around her at the merciless barrage. Warning lights flared and glittered over the control board, and she glared at the monster on her screens. “This isn't working. Form Voltron!”

“Yeah, let's see how Squiddly here handles the big guy!” Lance said, thrusting the control bars forward.

The Paladins brought their Lions together with practiced ease, only to find that the answer was “all too well”. Pidge soon found herself shaken half-out of her seat by the impacts of the thing's blades on Voltron's shield, and that same shield could not stop all of the seeker pulses. When Hunk tried to return favor with the scattergun, it only seemed to make the Robeast angry, and it was just slightly too fast and just slightly too far away to allow Keith to get a good strike with the Sword.

“Not good, guys,” Hunk panted, boosting them away from another multi-bladed rush. “We need to wear this thing down somehow, or stun it for just long enough to stab it or something. Are you sure that you can't crack its shield, Pidge?”

“I can, but not right now,” Pidge said, her hands dancing over her controls as she kept another salvo of seeker pulses from knocking Voltron apart. “To do that, I need time. Time to find the weakness, and time to recover from hitting it. It's a big effort, Hunk, and this thing isn't giving me any space at all.”

“No, there is a space,” Keith said tensely, slashing at a tentacle that came dangerously close, "It's narrow, but there's a little bit of space just out of reach of the saws, but not enough to trigger it into launching those seeker pulses. In fact, I bet—hey!”

A bolt of actinic pale-purple ions sliced through space to Voltron's left, just barely missing the giant robot, causing the Paladins to cry out in alarm; the enemy ships, having noticed that Voltron was having real trouble with the Robeast, had decided to join in the fun. Hunk brought a fist down hard on one armrest and yelled, “Oh, not cool, you jerks, not cool! You just wait your turn, already!”

The fleet of warships, if they heard him at all, ignored him. More ion blasts began to sleet through space around them, and Voltron suddenly had its work cut out for it in not catching a fatal hit. Lance, who had been drawing some odd parallels between pressing reality and pixelated fantasy, suddenly spoke up. “Guys, guys, guys, I know how to beat this! I've played this game before!”

“ _Game?”_ Allura demanded, “You call this a game?”

“Yeah, a video game,” Lance said, adjusting Voltron's course slightly to avoid an ion blast bigger around than Voltron was. “My cousin had an old Playstation Ultra, and there was this one sci-fi battle game that had a level just like this. Crazy dangerous level, things shooting at you from all directions, and a big ugly space freak wanting to eat your ship. Drove Carlos absolutely wild until I figured it out. Allura, let me take it from here. Pidge, can you work out _exactly_ how fast we need to go to stay in that safe spot Keith was talking about?”

“Already did,” Pidge replied, tapping at her controls. “Sending the data. It's pretty fast. Allura, can you give us a boost, like you did with the Balmera?”

Allura drew in a deep breath, opening up her heart to the mighty gestalt engine she rode in. Obligingly, the Lions offered her power, which she took in gratefully. This was not so different from what she had done earlier, pulling power from the key to that Quintessence stockpile and passing it along to save a life. Lizenne had shown her how to purify aetheric power not long after Kolanth's arrival, and how to give it the little push with her own will that concentrated and focused it, redoubling its efficiency, a task very similar to what she had done with the Balmera. When she returned the Lions' gift, the whole team felt it, and Lance let out a long, joyful whoop as he sent Voltron streaking off along a new vector. Dodging a few more ion beams, a suggestion from Keith had Pidge using the shield to reflect one of the smaller blasts to hit the Robeast in the face with it, just to keep its attention focused. It worked; flailing madly with its saws, the enraged monster came after them, hell-bent on total destruction.

“Definitely failing _Chimera's_ Rule #37 there,” Pidge said, observing the whirling vortex of death hot on their trail in her rearview screens. “Just what are you up to, Lance?”

Lance grinned viciously at his own screens, and at a particular heavy destroyer. “I'm going to use a problem to solve a problem. Hang on tight!”

The monster was fast, no question about that, but Lance had noticed that its turn radius wasn't as good as Voltron's was, and that it had not been built for sudden stops. Similarly, Galra warships were also slow to get over their own inertia, and their rate of fire wasn't all that good, particularly when you got really close up. Lance took the mighty battle robot directly toward his chosen target as if to ram it, then turned at the last minute to skim just over the surface of the hull, the ship's shields becoming visible with the close proximity. It was a beautiful bit of flying that would have had Lance's sim instructors back at Galaxy Garrison weeping into their hats, assuming that they weren't too busy wetting their pants at the sight of what happened a second or two behind them.

The Robeast did not have Lance's skills, but it did have enough raw strength and momentum to go right through the ship's shields like a brick through a plate-glass window, and it just kept on going. Through the ship from back to front, tearing through tons of hullmetal as though it were tissue paper. There was a huge flare of incandescent light when the thing hit the ship's power core, and it was just a little slow coming out of that blast, its glowing veins flickering uncertainly for a moment before steadying again.

“Did you see that?” Pidge said as Lance took them toward another big ship. “That blast slowed it down a little! Those big warships all run on Quintessence; enough of those bursts, and it might overload that thing's own core.”

“On it,” Lance said, executing another elegant barrel roll to avoid a shot from another ship. “Keith, on our next pass, see if you can put a slice in the big control beams by the engine section. Modhri told me once that if you mess those up, the power cores go haywire if you look at them crosseyed!”

“Gotcha!” Keith replied, readying the Sword.

Three more ships were destroyed before whoever was in command of the fleet realized what was going on, and the big ships started vanishing into the safety of hyperspace; Voltron was simply too agile, they figured, and the Robeast was simply unstoppable. The huge carrier ship that had brought the Robeast here, however, lingered just a little too long on the field, and it blew up spectacularly when Lance caromed his pursuer right through its engine section.

“It's working!” Allura said, observing the creature's drunken wobbling, which had grown more pronounced with each hit that it had taken. “One or two more good blasts should do it.”

“Yeah, but we're running out of ships,” Hunk said, watching the brief flares as the other Galra warships decided that discretion was the better part of valor. “We need something big, and they're running away.”

“Not all of them,” Lance said, turning Voltron to face the one target that couldn't get away.

“Lance,” Hunk said suspiciously, “What are you doing?”

“Lance, that's the moonbase!” Keith shouted.

“I know,” Lance replied cheerfully, “think, people. If it's supposed to be servicing and refueling whole fleets of ships at a time, it's going to have a really _big_ battery. On my mark, disengage and scatter.”

“Lance! You have gone mad!” Allura yelped. “At least adjust our angle a little, we don't want to drop what will be left of that moon onto the planet!”

“Lance, Tepechwa's going to be really mad if you don't leave him something to play with,” Pidge said sternly.

Lance made a rude noise and gunned Voltron's thrusters, taking them on a long graceful arc up to the underside of the moon. “If it keeps this thing from chopping us up into julienne fries, I don't care. He can deal, I can deal, and so can everyone else. Mark!”

Small as the moon was, it was still exponentially larger than even the supercarrier had been, and the base took up a great deal of it, both on and under the surface. As a result, the entire chunk of lunar pumice had been reinforced and fortified, resulting in an orbital fortress that was a good bit sturdier than it looked. That still didn't stop the Robeast from going right through the the basement levels, although it did keep the moon itself from shattering under the force of the explosion when the reserve tanks of Quintessence went up like a whole warehouse full of dynamite. The Robeast tumbled awkwardly away from the blown-out shell, and could not recover in time to save itself when Voltron reassembled. It was with considerable satisfaction that Keith cut the monster in half lengthwise and watched it blow itself to pieces. There was a breathless cheer from the Paladins as the fragments spread themselves into a fog of glitter into the void.

“Wow, that was a toughie,” Hunk said wearily, “great flying, Lance.”

The others added their congratulations as well, which Lance took with grace; he was too tired for his usual show of egotism, and was starting to tremble in reaction to the huge risks he'd taken. “Thanks guys,” he said, slumping back against his seat. “Wow, what a fight. I wasn't too sure that I'd be able to pull it off—it took me three solid days of gameplay to figure it out last time.”

There was silence in the comms. “I did not need to hear that, Lance,” Allura said delicately, and then keyed a broader commlink. “Coran, Tchak, are you there?”

“ _We're here, you crazy people,”_ Captain Tchak responded promptly, sounding equal parts awed and irritated. _“Nice work with that monster, but a lot of my guys are pouting, and so are the rest of our motley crowd. Did you have to destroy everything so thoroughly? There's hardly anything left to loot!”_

“ _Now, now, old chap,”_ Coran's voice cut in briskly, _“you can't blame all of that destruction on them, just most of it. After all, the Robeasts can't really be held responsible for their actions. Besides, there's a good half... well, a third of that big supercarrier left, and quite a bit of that moonbase is still intact. Why, my sensors are even picking up signs of survivors. The Hatchcrackers will just have to wait for their share of glory, but we can at least perform a few rescues.”_

Pidge giggled. “Freedom fighters, Captain, it's part of the job. And it's not 'looting', its 'salvaging' now.”

“ _Bah,”_ scoffed the indelibly piratical Tchak. _“Two words for the same actions. Tepechwa, Ophion and their guys have dibs on the ships, and Yantilee says that I'm to rescue any survivors and get them to safety, compliments of the Alliance. Kolivan's lot gets first crack at any data files that might still be intact, and I get first dibs on the base, apparently. So, what part of all of this mess do you want?”_

Hunk hummed thoughtfully, and proclaimed his answer in a firm, authoritative voice. “Lunch, a bath, and a nap. In that order.”

“Hear, hear,” Allura said, suddenly aware of the fact that she was worn out, starving-hungry, and smelled of rare mushrooms. “Stand by, Coran, we're coming home.”

 

Haggar spat a curse, although Zarkon merely hummed thoughtfully. “They have improved,” he rumbled, not entirely displeased by this.

“They have,” Haggar allowed irritably, “and so have I. The second will not fall for such tactics, and neither will the third. If nothing else, I have found ways of streamlining their production, which will serve us well when it comes time to mop up Voltron's allies.”

Zarkon nodded calmly. “Very good. I give you my permission to pick and choose any candidate you please for the raw materials--” He flicked a hand at the two trembling Governors huddled together a little distance away, “--I may personally recommend those two for the privilege of trying those new methods out... if they do not cease to annoy me with their petty quibbling.”

Haggar gazed upon the two terrified officials, and her smile made them whimper in terror. “Thank you, my Lord.”

Unremarked by all, Subaltern Kerraz waited patiently until the Emperor dismissed them, and then trotted back to give his own report to General Pendrash.

 

“It's beautiful,” Modhri said, wonder in his voice as he stared, enraptured, at the glorious wash of colors that a number of nearby nebulae had painted local space with.

Lizenne smiled fondly at the image on the screens. “Stellar clusters tend to be. That was one of the reasons why I chose to visit this place. The Nemortine Beronites exalt this beauty, and do their best to emulate it in their art and architecture. The Basilica is the pinnacle of their efforts, and I remember vividly my first visit there...” she chuckled, “although I had not expected to get the welcome that I got.”

Kolivan looked up from polishing his sword and glanced curiously at her. “I have been wondering about that.”

“I don't doubt it,” Lizenne replied, and switched the view on one of the secondary screens to show a sparkling sphere. “To tell you the truth, it took me entirely by surprise, and this amazing object is the reason for it.”

Kolivan and Modhri studied the image in puzzlement.

“A moon?” Modhri asked.

“And one apparently made of some sort of crystal,” Kolivan observed.

Lizenne nodded. “Yes. It's very unusual as moons go, being a sphere of nearly pure zemortite. The Beronites call it the Great Star of Ulnora, and it plays a major role in their history, culture, and religion. And their planetary economics, I'm afraid; they've had to pay their Governors some truly astronomical bribes to keep the Empire from simply breaking the thing up for its mineral content. On the day that I set foot within the halls of the Basilica, the Great Star had just entered the House of Receding Shadow—an astrological sign that matched up with one of their more important prophecies. I matched up with that prophecy as well, and so I came away from this world with gifts that I had promised to hold in trust for them, to be returned when the time was right.”

“And the time is right,” Modhri murmured.

She nodded. “It is, indeed. I have the Sacred Blade, the disciples of Love and War, and even a pair of Great Beasts, and by the time that we're cleared to land, the Great Star will be at the apex of its stay in the House of Burning Amber. And with the Relics of Nemorte, which have not suffered for their long rest or retrieval.”

Kolivan wiped his sword one last time with the polishing cloth, admired the sheen of the luxite blade, and slipped it back into its sheath. “My men were very careful to follow your directions. Was all of that ritual really necessary?”

She cast him an amused look. “The Nemortines believe that it is, and I'm not going to take any risks with a box full of genuinely holy objects. They might not be _our_ holy objects, but that doesn't make them any less holy. That spear of mine is very much the same sort of thing.”

Kolivan turned his head to gaze warily at the bone spear that lay in a special bracket along the bulkhead. A simple and primitive weapon, but his nerves prickled whenever he got too close to it. He'd had the uncomfortable feeling that it had been watching him the whole time that he'd been aboard the _Chimera,_ in fact, and a small, disregarded, and superstitious portion of his soul suspected it of sharing embarrassing shaggy-warrior stories with his own sword when he wasn't looking. “How did you enspell it?” he asked curiously, “I would think that such knowledge would have been lost.”

“Suppressed,” Modhri corrected, checking over his stun pistol. “I had to do a report on it in school, once. That the worship of the old Gods has declined to a few disregarded enclaves over the centuries isn't a coincidence. A lot of the Temples didn't like what Zarkon and Haggar were doing to Galran society in the early days of his reign, and when they tried to curb the worst of it, Zarkon crushed them. There are only a scattering of intact Temples left—only three Temples of Kuphorosk remain, and those and all of the rest of them are maintained as archaeological curiosities, rather than as active places of worship. Much of the Lore has been lost. Or cleverly hidden.”

Lizenne grinned fiercely at the curious Blade. “Such as the Songs that the God used to bind his Spear into the Three Worlds, which are still sung even today, in an encrypted form in the Tale of the Bone Spear.”

_That_ startled Kolivan. “Encrypted?”

Modhri nodded. “Haggar was aware of the threat that a genuine Spear could pose to her and her Lord back then, and did her best to wipe out the knowledge of their making. She destroyed whole priesthoods and burned whole libraries, but she quite forgot about the storytellers. After we obtained the  _Chimera Rising,_ Lizenne decided to use some of our time in researching it. Fascinating stuff.”

Lizenne made a few adjustments to their course and leaned back in the pilot's seat. “I had declared  _kheshveg,_ my Lord Blade, and therefore needed a proper weapon for the job. The materials were no problem, of course, I already had the yulpadi bone and sinews—remind me to invite you to dinner the next time I make stew—and getting the tambok fang needed only a little patience. Decrypting the Songs took most of the effort.”

Kolivan gave her one of his faint, rare smiles. “My grandmother used to use them to sing us to sleep. Nonsense words, but comforting all the same.”

“If she had any aetheric talent at all, then she may have unwittingly bent your fate into the shape it's in now,” Lizenne said thoughtfully. “Even in their disguised form, they have power. Those nonsense words are nothing of the sort—they're a phonetic rendition of a dialect version of a very, very old form of one of the major mother tongues of our people; even ten thousand years ago, it was a language that had been nearly forgotten by all, save for a few scholarly societies and contemplative orders. The trick was translating them back into that mother tongue; it took me some effort to find the records of the languages involved, and properly back-translating them cost me several headaches. Modhri, who is better at odd languages than I am, was of great help.”

Modhri returned her loving smile with one of his own. “It was my privilege, and hearing you perform them was an honor. Oh... we're being hailed.”

So they were, and on a secure line. Lizenne tapped the accept button, and the image of a Beronite priestess, an Avar to judge by the embroidery on its robes appeared on the screen. Not the most senior of Avars, but the fact that the priestess had made the first move was telling. It was very likely that the High Nomora herself had been up all night, every night, for a solid month with her astrological charts, trying to wring more information out of the stars.  _“Chimera Rising_ here,” she said politely, “who calls?”

“ _You are welcomed to the Holy Places of Beros,”_ the Avar said, her jewel-like compound eyes glinting in fascination. _“The Honored Visitor has business here?”_

Goodness, yes, Lizenne thought, and had probably kept her Avars up, too, praying for an answer. There should have been at least a quarter-hour's worth of polite greetings before the Beronite had gotten to the point. “This humble pilgrim has come to make a delivery, Honored Avar. A special offering from a Citizen Brecrell, care of Custodian Trenacri. If it is permitted, we will require the use of the loading dock.”

The Avar shifted, her antennae twitching in barely-concealed agitation.  _“Please state the nature of your party, and of the packet to be delivered.”_

Lizenne smiled gently, taking care not to show her teeth. Beronites were insectoid, and still had very acute instincts where it came to mammalian predators. “Myself, two males, and two Zampedri prairie dragons, all well housetrained. The packet is large; a commercial armored hovercrate, fully-sealed, and contains five fragile antiques in mint condition. I was informed that we would be expected.”

The Avar fidgeted again, rubbing her primary hands together. _“Do the Honored Visitors come armed?”_

“By necessity, simple arms only,” Lizenne replied in a reassuring voice, “a spear, a sword, and a stun pistol, all to be used only at absolute need.”

The Avar signed a blessing, seemingly having come to a decision. _“A place for your ship is granted, in orbit around the Moon of Orraln; you will be guided. Approach the planet in a shuttle to perihelion; a Temple Warden will bring you in. We eagerly await the opportunity to greet you, and to accept Brecrell's gift.”_

“Acknowledged, and we are grateful for the opportunity to discharge our duty,” Lizenne said, sketching a sign in the air that a far more experienced Avar than this one had taught her years ago. “Signing out, Honored Avar.”

“ _Signing out, Honored Visitor,”_ the Avar replied, and cut the connection.

Kolivan cast an appraising look at her expression and murmured, “A bit of an amateur, I feel.”

Lizenne smirked. “Devout Nemortines are far too honest for their own good. What might be child's play for you and your well-trained operatives are as the labors of titans for them. They're desperate to have the Relics back, and not just to validate the words of their Prophet. Ye gods, but Trenacri must be yearning for her rest! She wasn't young when I first came here, and she'll be a creaking ancient by now. Beronites are short-lived compared to us, but they can stretch out their spans a little if the need is great.”

“Who is Trenacri?” Kolivan asked.

“The High Nomora.” Lizenne gestured toward the glowing orb of the planet below, and at a pair of tiny green lights rising up out of the atmosphere completely outside of the normal shipping lanes. “They can't appoint a new Nomora without the Relics. One of the reasons that they entrusted them to me was that the Governor was looking for an excuse to confiscate them at that time. With those in his possession, he could have appointed _anyone_ to the office, including himself, and that would have been an absolute disaster for the entire region. The Nomora's will is absolute law, and the Avars take great care to elect only the purest of heart and keenest of mind, and the tests are stringent! Unfortunately, the Avars can't touch their Galra overlords, much less test them, and if one should be able to lay hands on the Relics without Nemorte herself manifesting and turning them into a potted plant, then that will be taken for acceptance by the Goddess. They don't dare risk it.”

“Oh, dear,” Modhri said, and then a smile flickered over his face. “A potted plant? Really?”

“Historical precedent,” Lizenne replied shortly, eyeing the screen with caution as the two green lights approached and revealed themselves to be a drone tug. “Several candidates in past years have tried and failed, and have wound up having to be watered twice a day. Two very nice lotura flowers, a dwarf yullaberry bush, six different species of troph-claw cacti, and most recently a stink-bulb as big as my fist. They still have all of them in the Basilica's greenhouse. It's nice to know that the old girl still takes an interest, isn't it?”

“Quite,” Modhri said, sounding a little shaken. “Hence our adherence to the local customs, eh?”

Lizenne paused to answer the drone tug's hail and allow it to lock a tow-beam to the  _Chimera's_ prow before answering. “Exactly. When we enter the Basilica, gentlemen, stay three steps behind me, and let me do the talking. Beronite males have less sense than a half-year-old cub, and as a result, the ladies tend to assume that all males are less than intelligent. As you might imagine, this has led to considerable difficulty between our race and theirs. Also, if you must smile, do not show teeth. To display one's dentition is a sign that you are thinking about eating someone. To spill blood or take a life within Temple walls is absolutely forbidden. We may expect some trouble, so be careful. Tilla and Soluk already know what to do, so don't worry about them.”

Whatever else the Beronites were, they were efficient. It took only a little time to get the _Chimera_ safely parked in the moon's shadow, and the moment that the drone tug disengaged, Lizenne, Modhri, Kolivan, and the two dragons moved the all-important crate into the ship's largest lander. It was such a prosaic-looking thing, Modhri remarked, a very ordinary large-cargo shipping crate: smudged, scraped, dented, stamped here and there with chipped and faded labels from at least eight different worlds, and it even had an inscription scrawled on one corner from someone willing to provide indecent and delightful services for a modest consideration. Deliberate, Lizenne told him. The actual case containing the Relics, properly packed in thick layers of shock-foam and a ceremonial shroud, was rather smaller, quite ornate, and a holy object in its own right. One of the best ways to hide something like that was to disguise it as a crate full of cheap pornographic magazines and tuck it away in a long-term storage warehouse on a boring, muddy little world that nobody important ever visited. Kolivan admitted that it had taken his own men a great deal of hunting around in piles of badly-organized, dust-laden hardcopy paperwork even to find which warehouse it had been stashed in, and one of them still had sneezing fits whenever he thought about it. If Tilla and Soluk had opinions on the finer points of concealing treasure from the avaricious, they kept them to themselves, and elected to lie down on either side of the precious cargo, looking for all the world like temple guardians in an adventure vid. They were obviously taking their part in the delivery very seriously, and the others, subdued by the dragons' cold blue stares, forbore to make any other comment.

Modhri took the helm this time, and moved the shuttle at a respectful speed out over the equator on the sunward side of the planet, admiring the view as he went. Beros was a tropical planet, lushly vegetated from pole to pole, its mountain ranges of a sort that Modhri thought of as old, low, dark, and secret peaks, creased with deep valleys and deeper gorges, all full of myths and legends forever just out of reach. He heard a soft sigh to his right, and glanced over at Kolivan, who was staring avidly down at the planet below. The burly Blade obviously had a dab of Simadhi blood in him to give him his light coloring, but most of his ancestry was likely the pure old stock of Galran Prime. Forest dwellers, one and all, and Modhri could practically feel him yearning to walk under the shade of those trees. He could feel that yearning himself, for that matter, and made a mental note to come back here after all of this adventuring about was done with... assuming that they survived.

Right on cue, another small ship approached and identified itself as being a Temple Warden; Modhri let Lizenne acknowledge it and allow it to guide them in, and then followed the small, sleek ship down through the atmosphere. A pretty thing, really, Modhri observed, very streamlined and efficient. His practiced eye, long steeped in engineer's lore, also detected hidden gunports. Pretty though it was, that little Temple ship could very easily make life difficult for those who didn't comply with its requests. Momentarily, he considered the pair of small objects that he'd tucked into a pocket on impulse, reflected on the odds that he and his odd little family faced, and glanced at the bone spear that stood propped against the bulkhead to his left. _Necessity,_ he thought, although not without some misgivings.

It did not surprise him in the least that the Basilica had its own landing yard, complete with a subterranean freight tunnel leading into the compound itself, and Modhri found himself hard-pressed not to gawp like a yokel at the resplendent structure that the Beronites had built to honor their deity. _Steady, now,_ he chided himself, _land the shuttle,_ then _gawp like a yokel._ Not that he had time to do so; the moment that he'd settled the shuttle down and shut down the drive, the cargo tram came sliding out of the tunnel on its maglev rails, manned by what appeared to be two temple guards and a senior Avar. Lizenne sighed and stood up, reaching out and taking up her spear as she did so. “Showtime, people. Remember—we're all but incidental in this. It's the Relics that matter. We will make the delivery with as much grace and goodwill as is possible, and if there is trouble, we will deal with it, quickly and bloodlessly.”

“I hear you,” Kolivan murmured as the rear cargo hatch hissed open, allowing him to eye the three Beronites appraisingly. They were small, the tallest of them barely on a level with his waist, and fragile-seeming. The glossy black chitin of their bodies, while attractively marked with dapples of iridescent blue, looked thin and brittle to his eyes. The Avar looked positively delicate in her diaphanous silken vestments, and even the guards' arms and armor looked more ornamental than anything else. “Are they truly so dangerous when angered?”

Lizenne sighed again as the insectile trio approached. “You have no idea. Hasn't your Order ever worked within this region?”

“No,” he admitted. “We are fewer in number than I would like, and there were better targets for our aims.”

She jerked her chin at one of the guards. “On their homeworld, the Humans have an insect that resembles the Beronites somewhat; they call them 'praying mantis', and there are few other insects that can match them for efficient killing. Beronites are far stronger and faster than they look, Kolivan, and when aroused, they simply do not stop until the threat is eliminated. Before Nemorte introduced them into their current way of life, their civilizations used to have a lifespan of approximately two hundred local years—each nation would spend those two centuries involved in a frantic arms race against all of the others, culminating in a series of horrific wars that would land them back at square one, that being barbarism. They'd spend a few years recovering the population count a little, and then begin the cycle all over again. Nemorte spent most of her life persuading her people that there was a better way, both by force of words and force of arms. Even so, the peoples of their neighboring planets soon learned not to annoy them.”

Kolivan gave her a look that, on any less professional a warrior, would have been termed “owlish”. “Then why did they surrender to the Emperor?”

She shrugged. “He proved to them that he could smash their planet by crushing one of their neighbors. One of the most valuable gems of wisdom that Nemorte imparted to them was an ability to learn from the bad examples of other people, and to avoid making the same mistakes.”

By this time, the trio of Beronites had halted a respectful distance away; the Avar made a sign of welcome with all four hands and twittered, “You are welcomed warmly, and are eagerly expected. You have Brecrell's offering?”

Lizenne returned the gesture with a one-handed blessing of her own. “I do, and will bring it forth shortly. The crate is guarded; I ask that you stand and allow the guardians to make themselves known to you. They are frightening in appearance, but will cause you no harm unless you give them a reason to do so.”

The Avar didn't so much as twitch an antenna. “Such measures are necessary when valuable objects are in transit. Send them out.”

Lizenne didn't have to do a thing. Tilla and Soluk had obviously been waiting for this moment, and they strode out of the cargo hold with immense dignity, heads held proudly and their spiky hides gleaming from their last polishing. To their credit, the three Beronites held their ground while the two dragons sniffed them over, but there were visible signs of surprise when this inspection resulted in the usual sneeze-and-giggle. Lizenne merely smiled. “Your virtue is confirmed. Zampedri prairie dragons can smell evil on a person, and you have none. Shall we proceed, Honored Avar?”

“Indeed,” the priestess said a little faintly, reaching out to caress Soluk's nose. “Truly, these are Great Beasts, and mighty guardians.”

Tilla chirped a polite acknowledgment, and the pair of them turned and headed back into the cargo hold. A few moments later they returned again, pushing the precious hovercrate before them. This, along with everyone present, was loaded onto the tram, and the Avar keyed the control that whisked them along into the sacred confines of the Basilica itself. The tram came to a halt in what was obviously a storeroom of some sort, with neat rows of racks upon which supplies were set; the Avar beckoned them through the wide doors—very thick doors, for all of their elegance, the three Galra noticed—and were led out into one of the most beautiful building complexes that they had ever seen.

The Basilica itself was a hexagon, which had pupped off multiple other hexagonal buildings in a worryingly fractal pattern over the centuries, all built of some sort of translucent lavender-blue stone that had been carved into wonderfully graceful flowing shapes, the windows all of beautifully-made stained glass scenes that let a jeweled light fall over sacred statuary and the areas where the faithful came to worship. The air was sweet with incense and hummed with the trapped echoes of centuries of holy chants, the walls hung with ornate tapestry and silken banners proclaiming the excellence of a deity that had led her people out of a brutal cycle of chronic self-destruction. The heart of it all was a tremendous room—the entirety of the Basilica's huge central hexagon, Modhri realized, in which stood a gigantic sculpture of the Goddess herself. Behind an altar that had to be a single, multi-ton piece of blue jade with five indentations where the Relics had been, stood an incredible work of art. Tons of space-black stone had been brought in to create it, and glimmering gems of incalculable worth were inlaid therein to form her markings and great faceted eyes. Translucent blue lace agate made up the stuff of her robe, the intricate embroidery at the hems picked out in sparkling gemstones. Dozens of master craftswomen had spent their entire lives working on this masterpiece, and the result was so astonishingly lifelike that Modhri half-expected it to greet them itself.

That honor, however, was reserved for the living representatives of the deity; the High Nomora herself was there, her blue markings gone violet with age, and surrounded by what might have been the entire Council of Avars. “Lizenne,” the elderly High Priestess whispered, “you have grown.”

Lizenne bowed with great respect to this potentate, and smiled. “It happens. You are looking as well as may be expected, Holy One. May I introduce my companions?”

“I shall guess at their identities myself,” the High Nomora twittered humorously. “Following your exploits has been quite exciting. It has kept me young far more effectively than the conventional life-extension elixirs. This magnificent male is your mate, I believe, said to have returned from the dead, and this excellent fellow is the leader of a secret Order that persists despite all that the Emperor may do to destroy it. Well done, sir.”

Kolivan dipped a bow. “It is an honor.”

“Yes,” Trenacri murmured, and examined the dragons, who were watching her with considerable interest. “May Nemorte bless us all... I had not known that your kind was mixed up in this.”

Tilla rattled and chirped something that sounded reassuring, but that had the Priestess making gestures of surprise and warding with all four hands nevertheless.

“Alas, that I will not live to see it,” she said breathlessly, “ah, well. Perhaps the Goddess will permit me to watch from the Next World. I have accrued virtue enough for that favor, I believe. Will you open the crate, Lizenne?”

Surprisingly, Lizenne gestured a negative. “I can't. I may give you the key, Honored Priestess, but I may not defile what lies inside. None of us will.”

The High Nomora turned to Modhri and Kolivan. “Will either of you open the crate, then?”

Sensing a test, Modhri essayed a respectful bow that included both the priestess and his wife. “I am married, Holy One, and I follow my mate's lead. If she says that this is your privilege, then I will not usurp it.”

Gemlike eyes glinted at Kolivan, and he met that glittering gaze evenly. “I have spent my entire life learning when not to take risks. This duty is yours, Holy One.”

Trenacri's eyes turned to the dragons. Soluk sidestepped away from the crate and sat down with his back to it, lifting his head to study the nearest window. Tilla merely sat down on her haunches and blew the Priestess a raspberry that echoed around the room and made the Avars titter nervously. Trenacri chittered a laugh. “Quite right! Your pardon, gentles, but I had to be sure. Many have fallen for that trap in the past, and have suffered—often quite briefly—for it. The key, if you would.”

Lizenne dipped a hand into a pocket and brought out the crate-key, which she handed off to Trenacri. Slowly, and with care for stiff joints, the old Priestess disengaged the seals and watched as the crate dismantled itself. The Avars hurried to pull away the heavy layers of shock-foam, the most senior of them carefully unwrapping the shroud of sapphire silk. The box beneath was large, big enough to fit two or three Beronites in and made of fragrant cuwolli wood, inlaid in intricate designs with other rare woods, metals, and gems. Trenacri laid all four hands reverently on the lid and raised it just enough to see what was inside, and then nearly dropped it when a harsh voice boomed, _“Halt! Stop where you are!”_

“Blast,” muttered Lizenne, turning to face the intruders.

Not just any intruders, as it turned out. This was the Governor himself, to judge by his uniform, as well as a pair of guard captains, a troop of live soldiers, and a large crowd of Sentries. All of them armed, and all with their guns out and held at the ready. Lizenne studied the gloating official's face, and grunted in distaste. She knew this man from her school days and hadn't liked him then, and it didn't look as though he'd improved much in the intervening years. A glance to either side told her that her companions were ready to fight despite the odds. Well, there was no harm in putting a bold face on it, at least. Getting a good grip on her spear, she opened fire with, “Karkos Var'Haxol, exactly what iniquitous favors did you have to perform for your many superiors in order to get this posting? They don't hand out plush jobs like this for anything less than a full _heplexit kir-thaxtha,_ preferably with a bucket of clepri oil within easy reach.”

Governor Karkos, who had been drawing in breath to pontificate with, made a strangled sound of outrage and went very red under his fur at this spectacularly rude accusation. “How dare you!” he snarled over a soft chorus of gasps and snickers from his men. “I should have known that the disappearance of the Relics was your doing, Rogue Witch—no one else could have possibly been so foolhardy. I see that you've been keeping low company as well—terrorists, animals, and the walking dead. Stand away from that crate, all of you; I am hereby confiscating it and everything within it, and let that teach you lying insects not to disobey your rightful overlords.”

“I see that your mother never managed to teach you manners, you silly idiot,” Lizenne said. “You have just insulted the holiest person on the planet, in the holiest place on the planet, and have declared your intent to steal the five holiest objects on the planet. Not a good idea, Karkos. One does not act unwisely in the House of a deity. Any deity.”

“You will be silent, traitor,” he growled ominously, “you and your confederates will drop your weapons and surrender.”

Lizenne tapped the butt of her spear on the stone floor, and for one terrible second, the sound of it filled the room to overflowing. Dust fell from the light fixtures and the stained-glass windows hummed and chattered in their frames. “No,” she said into the shocked silence that followed.

One of the Governor's troops had jerked back at that sound, staring at the spear in horror, and waved a frantic hand at his boss. “Sir, that's a bone spear she's got. An actual bone spear! My Granny said that you don't _ever_ mess with a Lady who's got a bone spear!”

“Quiet, you imbecile,” the Governor snarled, not taking his eyes off of Lizenne, who was beginning to sway slowly from side to side.

The soldier would not be silenced. _“Sir!_ I mean it, sir! My Granny says that if you get in the way of a bone spear, you'll be dead within three days if its keeper don't kill you herself! It's serious magic, sir! That spear's already had Commander Sendak. _Sendak,_ sir! My cousin was there when it happened, and--”

Governor Karkos whirled around and slammed a fist into the unlucky soldier's face, knocking him to the floor. “Be silent, you superstitious fool! It's nothing more than a--”

Karkos got no further than that, for the thin bright beam of a stun pistol laid him low. His men had no time to react to that either, for suddenly a witch and a warrior were among them.

From his prone position on the floor, the dazed and frightened soldier barely noticed the bruise forming on his face as Lizenne danced above him, spear whirling in a wheel of light, gone and back again elsewhere, spear butt and flashes of gold felling his fellow troops in twos and threes. She barely seemed to touch the ground at all, she moved so quickly, and beside her was a hulking shadow, threaded here and there with a pale purple luminescence, cold eyes gleaming pale blue in its masked face as a dark sword sliced guns in half and dark hands hurled men to the ground to lie there, unmoving. A pair of deep-toned roars that seemed to shatter the very air itself into pieces sounded a moment later, and there was a great deal of crashing as the two enormous dragons reduced the Sentries to scrap. He managed to crawl over to a handy pillar and use it to pull himself to his knees, but froze in terror when he saw something out of legend pointed directly at his heart. It was just as his Granny had described, when she had told him the old tales: a length of bone tipped with a fang from some huge predator and bound in place with sinew, simple and primitive. What wasn't simple and primitive was the pearly glow that shimmered along the shaft of the thing, or the cold fire that licked over the spearhead. It jerked against the grip of the witch holding it, and he could practically feel it thirsting for his blood.

“Stop that,” she told it in a firm tone that would have halted a mob in its tracks. She then turned luminous golden eyes upon him, and he found himself helpless under the force of her gaze. “Soldier, to shed the blood of another in Temple is absolutely forbidden. The Bone Spear understands this, but it has its own laws where an enemy is concerned, and those laws are subtle and strange, and it will not be denied its prey. In obeying the will of the Emperor, Karkos in effect became an extension of that will, and therefore a part of the Emperor himself. That is pack law, and older than the Empire. In obeying Karkos's orders, you, too, have become a portion of the Emperor, and the Spear desires his blood. Do you place the will of the Emperor above your own life, or will you surrender, and learn something about the civilization that Karkos came so close to destroying?”

The witch spoke the truth. His Granny had made her fortune as a professional sociologist specializing in tribal societies, including their own in the ancient days, and she had instructed him and his brothers just as thoroughly as any other student she'd ever had. The real question here was whether the military motto—that nothing would stop him other than victory or death—meant more to him than seeing his family again.

It struck him that such a philosophy was very inspirational, but a terrible waste of men. He raised his empty hands above his head and muttered, “I'll be good.”

The ethereal glow around the spear flickered and went out with a faint, disappointed sound, and the witch straightened up with a grunt, shaking hands made sore from holding it in check, first one, then the other. “Well done. That could have ended very badly for all of us.” She turned away, leaving him faint with relief, and called across the room. “Sorry about the mess, Trenacri, but Brecrell did imply that something like this would happen. Do you want to deal with these idiots, or should we take them off of your hands?”

“No, you have done quite enough,” the High Nomora said calmly, picking her way delicately over the wreckage-strewn floor. “Truly, you all are as the Prophet foretold, and I hope that you will dance as gracefully for your man when the next spawning season rolls around. A Blessed warrior with a sacred weapon—I will want to have a look at that in a little time—and those Beasts are truly Great! You have also chosen an excellent Disciple of Love.”

“Me?” The burly, dark-suited man asked, startled by the Priestess's wave in his direction.

_Him?_ Thought the rattled young soldier.

“Of course, young man. There can be no greater love than to risk one's own life for the sake of others.” There was a glint in the Priestess's eyes that spoke of inner fires that still burned despite her advanced age. “And you, man, how do you prove yourself to be the Disciple of War?”

The other man, a quite ordinary-looking fellow with a kindly-seeming face, pulled a pair of small items out of his pocket. “With a pair of gifts, Holy One. This first--” he offered what looked to be a badge of some sort, a wide V-shape of green-enameled metal, “--an offer of alliance. This token will grant your people safe passage in places where the Hoshinthra hunt, and membership in a resistance effort that grows daily. You are free to refuse it, if you feel that you must. The second gift--” he held up a common high-capacity data chip, “--is contingent upon your acceptance of the first. It is a copy of the plans for the Bagantush Destroyer. I intend to give the Olkari a copy as well, in time, and I feel that your people would do well to discuss the finer details of it with them.”

Lizenne hissed, looking genuinely surprised. “Modhri! What are you--”

He cut her off with a wave of one hand that the young soldier would not have dared to have made in a million years. “I nearly died to obtain it, so it's mine to pass on as I see fit. While I very much doubt that the thing in and of itself will ever be built, there are elements in the core systems that would give the Alliance a considerable advantage, if it is given to those who will not misuse it. Instruct me, High Nomora. May I entrust your people with this?”

The Priestess wavered, hands making involuntary grasping motions and eyes glittering with worried green hues. “Truly, you are the Disciple of War, for you offer us the keys to freedom—or to a future of unstoppable conquests of our own. You test me, young man, how you test me! And if I am so dearly tempted, then my lesser kinswomen will be far more so, perhaps beyond their strength. I will accept the first, but you will hold the second in trust for us. Not until it becomes absolutely necessary will you give that dreadful treasure to us. I will accept the gift of the Governor and his men instead, for they will have their uses; that sensible young fellow by the pillar there would do well to help the Temple gardeners with their work, I feel, and he will be grateful for that simple and undemanding post ere long, I guarantee it. Do help the guards tidy them away, if you will, my friends and allies. I must see to it that the Relics are properly placed now.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are the balm to our black, tortured souls. And depending on what season 7 holds for us, they also become the comfort for our tears. That, and we just like to know what our readers think, so feel free to drop us a line and thank you for your time and love!


	6. Meditations And Monsters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Us: Wow, Season 7 was fun! Can't wait to see what everyone else says about it!  
> Internet: Fandom in flames, creators and voice actors getting threats, and general terrifying insanity.  
> Us: O_o What the heck? *throws up a new chapter and runs away*

Chapter 6: Meditations and Monsters

 

All in all, Modhri thought to himself some time later as he took the shuttle back up through Beros's atmosphere, it had been a very pleasant visit. The vetting and verification procedures to prove the authenticity of the Relics had been both quick and successful, the ceremony in which the Relics had been placed upon the altar had been beautiful, and another where he and the others had been honored for their service had been gratifying. Certainly the feast afterward had been very grand, and all of them had stayed up very late in deep philosophical discussions with their hosts, even the dragons. It had been amusing to listen to one of the Basilica's most senior theologians being lectured by Soluk, who had been very grave and serious about their subject to judge by the tone of his quiet gronks and crackles. Tilla, he was pretty sure, had been trading ancient jokes with another, less senior scholar. Kolivan had been on his best behavior, and was soon fascinated by the core philosophies of the local faith, which were surprisingly similar in some ways to his own Order's tenets. Lizenne, of course, had discussed the finer points of magecraft with the High Nomora, and nobody else had been able to make heads or tails of their discussion. They had been allowed the use of the Basilica's comfortable guest quarters for the night, which had been kind, and he had risen early to check up on the prisoners, just to be sure. Karkos and his men had been made comfortable, if heavily-sedated in the infirmary, and the soldier with the knowledgeable grandmother had already been turned over to the head gardener by that time. He'd been understandably nervous, poor boy, but not unwilling to accept his fate. Modhri thought of his own early efforts in helping Lizenne plan and seed the envirodeck, and knew that yard work was indeed the soft option in these troubled times.

For now, however, he was just as glad to return to the _Chimera_ and set course for the rendezvous point where they'd meet back up with the Castle of Lions. This was a little tricky to achieve just now, for the orbits around Beros were very crowded at the moment. The news of the Relics' return had been put about sometime last night, and near space was thick with both small and large starcraft, no few of which were Temple Wardens. For the moment the Beronite ships were being very polite, but the atmosphere up here was ominous. There was a definite feeling of an explosion waiting to happen, and it made Modhri's nerves prickle.

Lizenne patted his hand. “You feel it, too, don't you? And Kolivan's as tense as harp strings.”

Modhri nodded. “It feels like a detonator counting down.”

Kolivan vented a soft _hmph_. “At least it will be _our_ detonator. I wish that you had discussed your gifts to the High Nomora with us beforehand, however.”

Modhri chuckled. “Firstly, I wanted the idea of their being on our side planted firmly in their minds; if they hadn't agreed to that yesterday, then it would have primed them to agree later. I've had the privilege of studying their technology before, and I definitely want them working with us, and trading shop talk with the Olkari.”

“Clever,” Lizenne allowed, “and your willingness to share the plans for a doomsday ship?”

Modhri winced at the sharp edge to her voice. “I had to be sure. When I was a student in the Academy, I managed to sweet-talk the librarians into letting me read anything I liked in the Archives. Other civilizations fascinate me, because all of those different ideas and philosophies affect how their technological developments progress. When I read the files on the Beronites, which did include some records of the pre-Nemortine wars, I saw many parallels between their kind and ours. I had to know if the cycle could be broken. Trenacri has proven that it can be.”

“Risky,” Lizenne murmured. “And if she had succumbed to temptation?”

Modhri smiled grimly. “I'm not a complete idiot. That copy of the plans has been edited slightly here and there, and is infected with a worm program that changes a few small but very important details every time the files are accessed. They could have built the Destroyer, and it would have given them a light show like no other... once. Once, and once only, and it would have left them unable to try again.”

They stared at him, shocked into speechlessness for a long moment, and then Kolivan gave him one of his rare smiles. “Are you sure that you will not join the Blade of Marmora, my friend? You're ruthless enough.”

“Quite,” Modhri replied firmly. “There is too much at stake, and our own people will be very vulnerable when Zarkon falls. The Paladins will have great influence at that time, but there are limits, and there is no point in making things more difficult.”

Lizenne began to laugh ruefully. “And you've just fulfilled another prophecy, O Disciple of War. Just a little one, a mere couplet that slipped out when Brecrell was half-asleep at her meditations. It goes: _'Beware, when what was hidden is returned, when beast and warrior have strewn the holiest place with the bodies of the oppressors; beware, for the hands of the Disciple hold a mighty advantage and a terrible temptation. Accept the advantage and shun the temptation, for disaster awaits those who grasp prizes too easily obtained.'_ Well done, sir.”

Modhri considered that as he parked the shuttle in the _Chimera's_ bay and shut down the drive. “Small triumphs are not to be dismissed. As the High Priestess, I can hope that Trenacri was ready for me. She should know the Lore back to front by now, shouldn't she?”

“We can hope,” Lizenne said darkly. “Now, let's get out of here before someone else does something precipitous.”

Chastened but by no means repentant, Modhri followed his wife toward the bridge.

 

It was quite late as the Castle counted the hours, to use the terminology of their Human houseguests. Privately, Coran preferred the horology of his own homeworld, having grown up with it and all. What was wrong with ticks and vargas? Yes, they didn't match up very well with those “hours” and “minutes”, but not everybody could be perfect. Frankly, neither system mattered at the moment. Unless one was a dedicated nocturne, it was still very late, and the _Chimera Rising_ hadn't yet returned. True, Modhri had warned him that it might take a day or two to pass off that box of religious artifacts, but one couldn't help but worry. It was odd, Coran mused as he strode through the silent, echoing halls of the Castle of Lions, but he had grown rather fonder of their friends and—not to put too fine a point on it—adopted family, more than he had thought possible. The Castle seemed far too empty without them here. Even when they were all aboard the _Chimera,_ it didn't feel this way. It was as though the Castle itself knew that they were gone, and missed them.

It wasn't alone in that, Coran thought to himself as he entered the cavernous hangar bay to check up on the Hatchcracker shuttles docked there. He could remember when every room in the residential areas of this mighty ship was occupied, the hustle and bustle of the palace servants, the constant, cheerful racket of Alfor's extended family, and even the subliminal squeaking of the ship's colony of mice in the walls. And the previous teams of Paladins. Oh, yes, the Paladins! Grand lads, the lot of them, even when their personal preferences made life difficult for the household staff. And team preferences, come to think of it. Why, the little dramas that played out constantly between them had been a nonstop soap opera, and when one added the constant jockeying of the trainees for position, became even more exciting; only one person could pilot each Lion, after all, and all of them wanted to be that one. Sometimes the sparring went beyond harsh words and prankish behavior in the trainee barracks. Coran could remember loud arguments, a few assassination attempts here and there, and even a formal duel or two. It was just as well that he'd caught those before they could end in tragedy, and had defused the matter by insisting that the young combatants use overripe lorqua gourds to settle their differences with. It had worked, and quite handily, although it had taken days for the smell to fade off, and longer to get the stains off of the walls. Truly, Coran thought as he ran his fingers over the proud hull of one Hatchcracker, those were the days.

Not that this current batch was any less choice, he mused, listening to his footsteps echo in a space that was once loud with the palace staff's comings and goings. Oh, he'd had his misgivings at first, but they'd shaped up nicely. He was particularly proud of the Princess, of course, but the others had kept up right along with her. Still, the sooner they found Shiro, the better. None of them had the leadership experience that the older man had, and they would need him. He remembered very well the state of galactic politics back in the day, and how hard old Alfor had had to work to bring all of those factions into some sort of agreement. That task would probably be slightly easier now—having a common enemy really did help, and Allura was starting to show a rare brilliance for that sort of diplomacy. If she studied hard, she might match or even exceed her lovely mother's facility with the art. Alfor might have been heroic as anything, but he hadn't had the patience that his lady wife had possessed, nor her ability to stand there, smiling sweetly, while some bloviating idiot blithered on about his precious grievances without actually giving in to the temptation of beating him unconscious with a table lamp. Most of the time, anyway. It was a damned shame that the poor lady hadn't had the chance to watch her daughter grow up.

With a sigh for those bygone days, Coran headed back up to the residential levels to check up on his housemates. Nasty would be hunting about for silverware right about now, having given the team a lesson in picking pockets earlier, which they hadn't done too badly at. Pidge, of course, had a natural advantage, what with those delicate, clever little fingers of hers, and Keith had nearly matched her prowess; it rather gave him hope for Earth's military, that. Lance had been a little clumsier, and Allura had had some trouble shaking off the “lady lessons” that her mother had drilled into her—'twasn't ladylike to go about with one's hand in someone else's pants, after all—but it was Hunk who'd had the real trouble. Not because of the size of his hands, but because of the effect of them. He'd hadn't even touched the booby-trapped rig when it simply spat the coins into his hands. Quite involuntary of him, or so he'd said, but the Unilu had been furious. The boy's talents were getting stronger. All of them were, to tell the truth, and it was starting to worry him just a little.

In the lounge, Coran paused to let the mice stampede by, Platt waving the solitary pair of jitlan tongs wildly over his head and squeaking cheerfully. Hot on their heels came the Unilu, snarling a choice selection of galley-man's vernacular, and he watched as they disappeared through a door on the far side of the room. The chase went quite unremarked by Lance, who was sitting on the couch, elbows braced on knees and eyes tight shut in concentration. On the table before him was a small potted plant from the hydroponics deck that had a torn leaf; off to one side sat a plate of sandwiches and a bucket of hot water. As Coran watched, the leaf began to mend itself, leaving a pale scar in the crinkly green surface, which in turn faded away. In addition, there was a peculiar, delicate crackle from the bucket, which was suddenly covered with frost; Lance drew in a gasping breath, broke the ice that had formed on the surface of the water, and gulped down about half of it before attacking the sandwiches. Shaking his head slightly, Coran carried on. It wasn't unusual for Paladins to develop odd talents like this, a handy gift from the Lions, but he'd rarely seen it so strong in a relatively new team. Alfor hadn't shown much of one at first, not really, but one or two of his team had definitely gained a thing or two right from the outset. He'd found out the hard way not to play Dix-Par with the green Lion's lady, that was for sure, and she'd extracted some rather embarrassing promises from him before she'd let him have his pants back.

Grand times, grand times, and how he missed them! Never a dull moment with that bunch around, although they'd never really managed to get Zarkon properly loosened up. Too much pride there, even then. Even half-blitzed on horath, he'd been too stern a young man for Coran's liking. Damned fine leader. Too good at it, really. If only they'd had just a little longer before Golraz had been destroyed...

Coran passed the kitchen, where he smelled something cooking. Not the usual savory scent of Hunk's artistry, and when he looked in, he saw Keith leaning back against the counter, eyes closed and brow furrowed in deep concentration. On the counter next to him was a plate, upon which seemed to be a bit of machinery from one of the lab's junk bins, and badly corroded from the look of it. Across from him on the stove, one of the smaller frying pans was sitting on the induction surface with what looked to be about three or four eggs' worth of scramble sizzling merrily away. That neither the stove nor the induction surface was active didn't seem to be worrying him much, and by the time the eggs were ready to eat, the machine part was as sparkling-clean as the day it had been made. Keith grunted, wiped his sweating face, and retrieved a cold drink from the freezer before plating up his midnight snack. Coran had to hand it to Lizenne and the dragons; such lessons were a model of efficiency. Their trick of moving the unpleasant side effects of these rare talents to where they'd be of some use was inspired.

Allura, Pidge, and Hunk were up in the lab, each practicing their talents in their own fashion. Allura was perched in a chair and passing a bright pink spark of aetheric energy from hand to hand, a similar rosy glow emanating gently from her body. Hunk was doing something obscure to what had once been a Sentry, and Coran could see the solid metal of the internal parts flowing into new configurations at his touch. Pidge had managed to dig up an old holographic drafting board from somewhere, probably out of one of the storerooms, and was sitting at the table, her chin in her hands, gazing reflectively at the device as it drafted some sort of system diagram without so much as a touch on the controls. Hunk, as always, had come prepared, for a large, half-empty basket of tanrook buns sat equidistant between them. Hunk muttered something, rubbed tiredly at one eye, and held out a hand to Allura, who reached out and dropped the spark of light into his palm. It flared a roseamber-gold for a moment, and Hunk returned to his work with renewed energy while the Princess retrieved a bun for herself. A grunt and a gesture from Pidge had her tossing a second one over, and Coran nodded in satisfaction. Definitely an improvement in team relations, there. With a sigh, he returned to the bridge, where Zaianne met him with a polite nod of greeting and a murmur of, “Is all as it should be?”

Coran leaned on the console, gazing out at the empty stars. “As much as it can be, yeah. Much of it's as empty as intergalactic space, and that's not right for a working flagship. It gets me down now and again, you know. Any sign of the _Chimera_ yet?”

Zaianne gestured a negative. “Not yet. It won't be safe to contact each other at long range until we've taken the Dinvashko comm-hub station, so we agreed on comm silence. They should be back soon, and then things will pick up enough to lay the ghosts for a while.”

“Ghosts?” Coran asked.

She nodded, flicking her elegant hands at the surrounds of the bridge. “Oh, yes. Not the horror-vid sort, but the whispers in the walls that you'll generally find in a ruin. I hear them too, Coran. The very substance of ancient dwellings will remember when they were populated and loved, and hang onto the voices of their long-vanished inhabitants until the very stones are worn away to dust. I have seen the little shadow movements out of the corners of my eyes, and have heard the laughter of children lost to the past.”

Coran's face pinched with loss, and he tugged on his mustache in an attempt to conceal the pain. “That's exactly it, Madame, that's the very thing precisely. It's nice to know that I'm not quietly going mad after all. Especially after hours, when no one's about... you've experienced this before.”

“I have,” she said, her expression turning grave, “many times. Every time the Emperor sees fit to destroy a planet, the Order takes notice, and will occasionally search those dead worlds for anything of use. I know, it's grave robbing, but the Blade of Marmora has had to give up its scruples in favor of survival. When I was with Khaeth's father on Earth, there was an ancient native settlement not too far from his cabin. We took care never to disturb it, but on full-moon nights when the coyotes were singing to each other, I could hear the voices of men and women in those calls.”

Coran nodded. “Yeah, but it's hard when it happens to a place where you were born and raised. Take my advice, Madame; if someone should ask you if you'd like to take a ten-thousand-year nap and see the future, tell them 'no'.”

Zaianne chuckled, and then vented a satisfied _“ah,”_ when the Castle's proximity sensors pinged. On one of the screens to their right was the very welcome shape of a Hanifor science ship. “There they are, and with no signs of having had to fight their way out. Very good. Let us focus on the living present now, Coran, and work toward a future in which real children will fill these halls with laughter again.”

He smiled at her and turned to hail the returning ship. In truth, he yearned to see the day in which Allura was a fully established and universally respected monarch, with a doting husband and a large brood of royal children for him to impart his wisdom to; a fine goal, withal. “Excellent idea, Madame. Hello out there! You're not selling encyclopedias, are you?”

“ _No, nor do I intend to burgle the Castle, you silly ass,”_ Lizenne replied from a secondary screen; she looked relaxed and reasonably cheerful, which was a good sign. _“Trust Zaianne to have shown you the Python file, it's just your sort of humor. I'm sorry that we're a touch late, but the Priestesses insisted that we stay the night. Everything went well on our end; we'll soon have the aid of every devout Nemortine out there, as well as anyone they can persuade to join the cause. Is the Princess still awake? As our household diplomat, she will be speaking with the Beronites, and I will need to tell her what I know of their people.”_

“Forewarned is forearmed, and all of that,” Coran replied cheerfully. “The whole team waited up for you. I'll give them the heads-up, and we can all have a culture lesson.”

“ _Very good. We'll be in shortly.”_

Her word was as good as the deed, and very soon after that, everybody had gathered in the main lounge, the Paladins clamoring excitedly at cross-purposes over tea and Hunk's leftover tanrook buns. Lizenne and her team listened to the rather jumbled tale of Lance's triumph over the buzzsaw-squid Robeast with great interest, and she laughed and ruffled his hair fondly at his solution to the problem.

“Never let it be said that video games are a useless waste of time,” she declared, “but what a mess! Was there anything left at all for the others?”

“Actually, yeah,” Hunk said, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms behind his head. “Captain Tchak pulled a lot of survivors out of the wrecks and scored a bunch of loot, and there was a lot of good stuff for Ophion and the Blades to poke around in. Yeah, we broke a lot of stuff, but that just made it easier to pick through. Galra warships are _big,_ and we'd busted them all up into sort of bite-sized chunks. We'd actually made it easier for them to pick out the really good stuff—oh, and Kolivan, your guys managed to get all the data.”

“Oh?” Kolivan said, looking interested.

Pidge grinned. “Yup. Ever since I started cracking their AI's, they've been locking their main computer cores in these big, thick, shielded safes. Not that it helps much, but it keeps all that logic circuitry from getting blown up along with the ship. Drosh says that his team found some things in the moonbase's data vault that you really need to see. How'd you guys do?”

“Reasonably well,” Modhri said, and told them of their holy quest to Beros. Somewhat at length, and Zaianne poked him with a finger at the end of it.

“I should swat you for plagiarism,” she chided gently, prodding him in the ribs, “that fight scene was lifted directly from Tandrok Chalep'Thora's rendition of the _Legend of the Bone Spear.”_

Modhri smiled and pushed her finger away. “Nevertheless, it happened just like that. I saw it with my own eyes, Zaianne. The Spear glowed, and the blade burned with cold fire. Lizenne managed to keep it from killing anyone, but it was a near thing.”

“Not so near a thing as what you did right afterward,” Kolivan rumbled, giving him a hard look.

Keith frowned, trying to picture his adoptive uncle taking unwise risks. “What did he do?”

Kolivan told them, and then Modhri had to explain his reasoning for nearly giving a potentially very dangerous ally a very dangerous weapon. Allura stared at him in astonishment, and then in calculation. “In some ways, it is a shame that you never went into politics,” she said slowly. “You are very clever, Modhri, but I do wish that you would tell the rest of us  _before_ you pull these little pranks!”

“Lizenne has already read me the riot act,” Modhri said with one of his rare mischievous grins. “I was properly contrite, believe me, but I cannot make that promise. This game that we are playing has the very highest possible of stakes, and if I see an opportunity to improve our odds, I will take it.”

“May you be as wise as the First to bear your name,” Lizenne muttered sourly, and then turned her gaze back to Allura. “When do you intend to take out that comm-hub station?”

“Very soon now,” Allura replied, tapping a small communicator that hung from her belt. “We're waiting on a signal from Sylerae, who is keeping an eye on Imperial movements for us. I'm afraid that we stirred things up more than a little out by Telarsh, and that's muddled everyone's schedule.”

Lizenne nodded and glanced up at her dragons, who had been listening in thoughtful silence. Soluk winked at her, and Tilla leaned down to lick Allura's ear very gently. “So it has. At least it's giving the Beronites some cover. It's likely that they will send a representative to speak with you, and I'll need to make sure that you know what to expect of them.” She smiled at Hunk's huge yawn. “That can wait until morning, when there is less of a likelihood that I will bore you to sleep without noticing, and wind up dictating your nightmares.”

Allura giggled, yawned, and stretched out her shoulders with a grunt and a crackle of stiff muscles. “I admit that I could use the rest. Until tomorrow, then.”

 

The signal came through the following day; the total destruction of most of a battlefleet and an entire orbital fort had not gone unnoticed, and a sizable portion of the Empire's forces in this region had gone to investigate and hunt around for their trail. This had left the Dinvashko System with only a skeleton fleet to guard the comm-hub station, which made it, at first glance at least, an easy target. Allura wasn't too sure about that; Haggar had already demonstrated that she could get a Robeast from point A to point B practically before it left on several occasions, and did not relish the thought of facing another one. It would have been easier in some ways if the things had been more like the Sentries, which were mass-produced machines. Once you had the measure of them, they weren't all that difficult to deal with. Each Robeast, on the other hand, was unique; each one had been very different from all the rest, and it was difficult to figure them out without taking serious damage in the process. On the _other_ other hand—Nasty had a few to spare and he waved them about dramatically when he pointed this out—it was a good thing that she _wasn't_ mass-producing Robeasts. Voltron was doing okay so far with facing them one at a time. Having to deal with two or three at once, or a whole team of them, or a whole armada of them, would be just a little bit too much of a challenge.

That, of course, had started an argument between Pidge and Lance over how they would deal with that sort of disaster. They'd been able to use the buzzsaw-squid to deal with the fleet, yes, but would that sort of tactic work on other Robeasts, and could they be tricked into destroying each other like that? Hunk pointed out that if Pidge could get into the brains of the biggest Robeast, she could drive it crazier than it already was and make it attack the others, to which she retorted that he could use his own powers to scramble their motive systems. Allura herself had chimed in, suggesting that Keith could burn Haggar's controls out of it, and perhaps that would inspire the thing to go on a vengeance-rampage all on its own, possibly even heading back to the Center and attempting to tear the place apart. Keith suggested in return that she could pull the power out of it and channel it into the Lions, and then Voltron itself could go on an unparalleled smashfest. Lance alone had no idea what he could do about such creatures, but he was positive that there was something. It was a very interesting discussion, for all that none of them knew whether or not they would be able to pull off any of those aetheric feats, and it kept them too occupied to get pre-battle jitters until they were actually in position. In truth, the sight of the station sitting there in an outer orbit around a small, rocky planet and accompanied by only eight or nine ships was almost a letdown.

“And there it is, guys,” Keith said tensely, gripping the control beams in sweating hands. “Think you can take the Station, Pidge?”

Pidge reached out with her more arcane senses and found pretty much what she'd been expecting. “Yeah. It's not shielded any heavier than Lotor's fleet was, and I could usually take one of those without too much of a headache. It was actually starting to get easier for me when you guys showed up. I'll need a snack and a nap before Hunk and I start fiddling with its brain, and we might not want to be here by that time.”

“ _Not a problem, Number Five,”_ Coran said cheerfully. _“Tepechwa tells me that the Hatchcrackers have powerful tractor beams. If necessary, we can simply move it to someplace private where you can work on it in peace. You_ were _intending to make it a mobile fort, weren't you?”_

“Yup,” Hunk said with a grin, “she'll be Clarence's little sister, and she'll run rings around everyone else. Oooh! I'm gonna name her Jennifer, after Jennifer Matthews, who was the biggest gossip in seventh grade. Even the teachers had to go to her if they wanted to know what was going on in the student community. She knew _everything.”_

“Yeah, I remember her!” Lance laughed. “Even the girl-gangs and sports jocks had to be nice to her, or she'd ruin their reputations overnight. I made her a purse. She liked that purse, and I never heard a bad rumor about me after I gave it to her.”

“ _You_ made her that purse?” Hunk asked delightedly. “The one with the red velvet roses? That was a really good purse, man, she took it everywhere, and said it was designer. All of the popular girls kept trying to find out which designer it was, and she never let them see, and it drove them crazy.”

“It was designer,” Lance replied smugly. “I designed it myself. Then I had to make more for my aunts and sisters, but hey, win some, lose some.”

“You got all the wins that time, pal. How much did they pay you for those?”

Lance smirked smugly, remembering the favors extracted in return for a certain electric-blue version made for his eldest sister. Marcia absolutely hated having to babysit, but she had watched a whole roomful of rambunctious cousins for a whole day for that purse. “Enough.”

“Indeed,” Allura said in a firm tone that called the others to attention, “enough. Is everyone in position?”

“ _Ready and waiting, Princess,”_ Coran replied.

“ _Ready,”_ Lizenne replied from the _Chimera._

“ _Ready,”_ Kolivan confirmed.

“ _Ready,”_ Ophion chimed in.

“ _Let us at 'em, Lady,”_ Tchak said in a wry tone, _“assuming that you don't hog all the fun again.”_

She smiled grimly. “I will endeavor to see to it that you all have a share this time. On my mark, everyone... GO!”

It would have been a very dramatic approach if anyone could have seen it. Due to the nature of their target, it was imperative that they should surprise the enemy and take them out of action as quickly as possible; every ship in their fleet except for the Castle had been fitted with an invisibility system, and they were making full use of that advantage now. Indeed, the Galra ships weren't aware that they had company until one large destroyer came apart at the seams; a few seconds later, the Station itself began to sputter and fuzz out as Pidge's well-honed talents cracked the aetheric shield and silenced its AI. The great heavy hulks of three Hatchcrackers suddenly appeared at the Station's shuttle bays, biting through the tough hullplate without trouble and sealing in their own airlocks; the moment that those new seams were cool, the hatches opened, allowing the teams of pirates and Blades free access into the halls. The Dinvashko Comm-Hub was large as such installations went, but it had no more than twenty live personnel aboard, and its complement of Sentries were no match for the boarders. It was over in minutes, which suited Captain Tchak just fine.

“ _As slick a takedown as ever I've seen, folks,”_ he said in a satisfied tone as the last warship's drive sputtered out. _“Kolivan and his boys are still mopping up the crew on that station, and Tepechwa's and Ophion's crowd will haul it off just as soon as they're done. How's your head, Varda?”_

“Sore, but I'll live,” Pidge replied around a mouthful of lelosha wrap. “That was too easy, guys. We'll want to get out of here pronto—I'm not sure if I silenced that Station before it was able to get a distress call out.”

“ _Its very silence will be a distress call,”_ Modhri replied grimly. _“The communications network is closely monitored for failures, since every minute that the local systems are down, it can cost businesses billions, even trillions of gac. That station served as a vital relay for both civilian and military use.”_

“Hey, that's why we chose it,” Lance replied. “How long would it take for those guys to replace—whoa!”

Suddenly, they were not alone. Where a moment before there had been only empty space, there was abruptly a ship. A very large ship, and one of a sort that they had been hoping would not show up. Starlight gleamed on streamlined purple hullplate as the huge cargo bay doors swung open, dropping an enormous, tightly-wound tangle of something strange out into space before leaping into hyper again; the captain of that Crovanx-class supercarrier had learned from the poor example of his colleague, and was not interested in hanging around to watch the fight.

“Crap-crap-crap, that's another Robeast,” Hunk said anxiously as the creature began to unwind itself. “Everybody, get out of range!”

“ _Can't,”_ Ophion replied tensely, _“the Station's still full of Marmorans, and we haven't scanned the wrecks for survivors yet.”_

“The Robeast will want us,” Allura replied, “we'll draw it off, but get out of here as soon as you can. Lizenne, if you can't help us deal with that monster, help our allies instead.”

Lizenne spat a curse.  _“This one's all yours, Allura. I've had absolutely no experience at all in dealing with constructs of this nature. Drat. I might have, if I'd let Mother force me into taking the full tour of Haggar's lab when I was a girl, but the very thought of it nauseated me. That and the jar of pickled ledra I'd loaded my guts with. Ye gods, this one's ugly.”_

The Robeast had unfurled into something vast and chaotic, looking more like a tangle of stormwrack than anything else. It held a definite resemblance to a ragged sheet of something like a torn-off fishing net, or perhaps a jagged snarl of barbed wire, and there were strange lumps and nodules caught up here and there in the web. The largest of those bulges opened like a flower, revealing rows and rows of jagged teeth, each one longer than a freight shuttle.

“Kmasht!” they heard Tepechwa curse. _“I know that shape. Paladins, hear me! That's a_ t'nok-vlabbet-upspak-logra! _Don't let it grab you!”_

“A what?” Keith asked, rolling his Lion hard to one side as the monster approached.

“ _A dangerous predator from his homeworld, sort of half-plant, half-animal,”_ Lizenne replied, _“The name has two translations. The scientific version means 'all-devouring bramble net'. The common version is mostly a lot of panicky screaming. How do your people deal with these creatures, Tepechwa?”_

“ _By tossin' it poisoned meat, that's how,”_ Tepechwa snarled. _“Ain't nothin' else that works! Those things're too ropy to cut, they don't burn, and once they've rooted, they can't be dug out with anythin' less than an armored dozer-tank. It takes twenty trained troops to deal with one adult growth, and a man's weight in meat well-laced with crystalline salpite. I ain't got one clue as to what'll poison this freak.”_

“We'll figure it out,” Pidge said, watching the monster warily; the smaller nodules in the web were starting to glow an unsettling shade of orange. “Get clear!”

The Robeast rippled like a shaken-out tablecloth and let fly with thick ion beams from its glowing nodes, and the Paladins soon had their hands full with trying to deal with a creature that had already been an apex predator before Haggar had gotten her hands on it. It wasn't as fast as the buzzsaw-squid had been, but it was a very great deal more flexible. It essentially had no blind side at all; while it had nothing that could be called eyes, it sensed the Lions equally well on either side and on the edges, it could stretch to nearly two and a half times its original length, it could fire at any angle at all, and it was grabbier than a whole basket of octopi. It was extraordinarily difficult to land a direct hit on it, that was for sure; it did not like it when the Lions aimed for its cannon-nodes, and it could flip them into and out of protective folds of itself in a way that no starship ever could. Since no other part of the thing seemed to be vulnerable, this was a major problem.

Keith swooped in dangerously close to the monster, playing a stream of fire over a barbed length of it without doing any noticeable damage. “This isn't working,” he called to his teammates, “we need to get at those nodes, but it keeps rolling itself up around them. Is there any way that we could sort of stretch it out?”

“Try flying around the perimeter,” Allura suggested. “If the four of you can get it to reach out all at once, I may be able to hit the nodes.”

“Worth a shot,” Hunk said, “here goes...”

The tactic worked, after a fashion. The Robeast flattened out like a tablecloth, snatching furiously at the four speeding Lions. Allura directed her Lion into position and attacked, aiming for one of the larger nodes. Unfortunately, this immediately got the monster's attention. The monster began to shuffle its parts, each node and nodule sliding along the web of its body like golf balls through a nylon pantyhose, bringing the huge, flowerlike mouth into position directly below her. It then ballooned upward toward her in a nightmare rush, bringing its edges up and around in an attempt to englobe the black Lion. Lance yelled in alarm and sent his Lion surging upward to catch the monster by one trailing edge, the vast fanged jaws clamping down hard on one fringe. He instantly regretted it, for he suddenly felt a horrible drain on his energy—on the _Lion's_ energy—and his screens began to flicker and fill with static. The blue Lion let go and tumbled helplessly away.

“Blue!” Lance yelled desperately, pounding on the control board. “Stay with me, girl, stay with me! Guys, Tepechwa's right— _really_ don't let that thing touch you! It absorbs whatever powers the Lions! Princess, are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” she said, sounding a little shaky; the sight of a five-part pseudo-vegetable maw that was larger than her Lion coming at her like that had rattled her more than a little. “The black Lion is very fast when he needs to be. We need to form Voltron—the Lions simply aren't able to do any real damage to this creature while they're apart.”

“Yeah,” Lance said breathlessly, patting his boards as if trying to comfort his Lion. “Give me a minute, Blue's still messed up. But seriously, it was a little like that time we fought Zarkon, when Haggar used that big weird machine to zap us, and we all checked out for a minute there. How did you break that thing, Allura?”

Allura dodged another grappling fold of the monster behind her, trying to fight and think at the same time. “Haggar tried to blast me with her own magic. A killing strike, only I absorbed it instead of dying, like poor Antok did. It felt like drinking hot acid! I redirected it into the device, causing it to destroy itself.”

“Huh,” Pidge said thoughtfully. “Think you can do it again? You'll have the rest of us backing you up this time, and Voltron as well.”

“I don't know,” she replied. “The device was only a machine, not an animate thing like this one, and it wasn't active when I destroyed it. I may need... other help.”

“Well, we discussed this earlier,” Keith said grimly. “Looks like we're just going to have to give it a shot. Let's try this the usual way first, though—none of us other than Pidge has had much practice at that sort of thing. You ready to form up yet, Lance?”

Lance glanced around at his cockpit, seeing the lights starting to steady and the screens recovering their clarity. “Wait for it... wait for it...” A flare of blue light rippled through both his heart and his instruments as the Lion shook off its shock. “Now!”

“Form Voltron!” Allura commanded.

The Lions came together eagerly, as they always did, but the Robeast was not impressed by the spectacle and immediately sought to wrap itself around the giant robot like a homicidal cloak. Voltron dodged away, Keith bringing out the sword as quickly as he could. For all that it was a mighty weapon, Hunk had reservations.

“Be careful with that, Keith,” he warned as Voltron slashed at a lashing fringe. “My Dad and some of my uncles once took me on a fishing trip, and Dad harpooned a big squid, and it wrapped its tentacles all the way up the shaft and onto his arm. It took a half-hour to pry the thing off of him, and he's still got scars all the way up to his elbow.”

“Gotcha,” Keith replied, noting how the monster rippled itself to avoid the edge of his sword. It moved like a sheet of silk on the wind, and as someone who knew a thing or two about swords, Keith knew exactly how hard it was to cut a thrown silk in midair. “Want to try your scattergun, Hunk?”

“Worth a try,” Hunk said, slotting his bayard into its socket.

The scattergun didn't help either. The Robeast simply spread itself out so that the majority of Voltron's blasts sailed harmlessly through the spaces. “Pidge, can you tangle it up in those vine things?” Lance asked.

“Not without breaking the shield on it first, Lance. Haggar doesn't want me getting into its brain.” Pidge pushed at the dirty ice of its aetheric defenses and shuddered at the jangling screech of it. “I can break it, but you'll have to do the rest because it's going to take all that I've got.”

“What if Allura feeds you power, like when you pulled the hexes out of Kolanth?” Keith asked.

“I can do that,” Allura said, glaring at the monster as it made another grab at them, five-part mandibles gnashing hungrily. “Tepechwa did say that the best way to deal with such creatures was to poison them. Let us try giving this one a terminal case of indigestion. Are you ready, Pidge?”

Pidge focused her full attention on the Robeast's shield, easily as thick and vile as the one on the planet-buster had been. “Let me have it.”

 

“What are they doing?” Zarkon muttered, watching the images on the screen with avid interest despite the early hour; General Pendrash's ever-efficient young aide had sent them a polite alert that Voltron had surfaced again, and Haggar had been quick to send the second Robeast to meet them. “That's not how you face such an opponent,” he grumbled critically, “they're too defensive in their strategy, and they have not yet truly learned to act as one.”

“They are inexperienced,” Haggar snapped irritably; the aide's alert had woken her up out of a sound sleep, and it had made her cranky. “It is all to the better if they fail to defeat it. I want at least two of them safely dead, although the other three might make decent Robeasts as well. That they are still acting as individuals is to our—ah.”

Zarkon breathed out an echoing exhalation as the Lions formed up into Voltron, and the muscles in his arms and shoulders tensed. He remembered that sensation so well, that feeling of ultimate power as four Lions and four pilots added their strength to his, and his heart ached sharply for the loss. He watched as Voltron evaded, slashed ineffectively with its sword, evaded again, and tried to drive its attacker off with the shoulder-mounted weapon, very unsuccessfully. “Just what sort of subject did you use to create that one?” he asked.

“A flowering ambush from Hepplonir,” Haggar replied with a touch of pride in her voice. “A difficult and dangerous semi-animal with no known natural enemies. The Hepplans prefer to avoid them whenever possible. I had to keep it in an isolation tank before use.”

Zarkon humphed. “I thought that it looked familiar. We had to hunt down a terrorist group there once, and Alfor stumbled right into a thicket of them.”

Haggar chuckled. “Yes, he did. He discovered the hard way that Alteans don't taste good to those things, and while he was rather chewed when the team returned, he was alive.”

“He had a nasty, itchy rash for a week as a result,” Zarkon smiled nostalgically. “Drove the medical staff absolutely wild with his complaints, as I recall, and that sidekick of his made some very inappropriate jokes about it, and Gyrgan was up all night for days slathering him with ointments. I wonder if—ah! It's got them.”

The Robeast had dodged around behind Voltron and wrapped it tightly in its web; the great battle robot struggled briefly, and for a moment it seemed to go limp in the Robeast's embrace. Zarkon's heart lifted briefly, only to clench in surprise when the Robeast jerked suddenly, its cords thrashing about in frantic, uncoordinated spasms. Haggar gasped, watching with wide eyes as her most powerful creation to date wrung itself to shreds before her very eyes, its core exploding with a bright, brief flash.

She exploded too, into a torrent of paint-peeling profanity that would have taken the crust off of a Hempergian galleyman. “That witch!” she snarled when she ran out of less-polite words. “That Technomage. She's getting stronger, damn her!”

Zarkon nodded. “Ready the third Robeast, then. If she is truly as strong as you believe her to be, then she will not be able to strike it down.”

Haggar humphed, but seemed to settle, centering herself once more upon her work. “I shall, and we shall see how she and the rest of her filthy little cadre will deal with that.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra points to anyone who can correctly guess where the Flowering Ambush originally comes from! :D
> 
> Comments are our fuel source, our life's blood, our mana from the gods...basically coffee for the crazed writers of this series. This story wouldn't be half as fun to write without the input from our readers. So thank you for every question, bit of encouragement, and suggestion. ^_^


	7. At The Heart Of The Matter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! I've just gotten off the phone with a hotel receptionist after doing Mighty Battle to get reservations for Anime Central, and am still jittering so hard that I'm shaking the keyboard. So, you guys get another chapter as I attempt to unwind and stop screaming. @_@

Chapter 7: At The Heart Of The Matter

 

The Paladins dragged in, looking equal parts exhausted and upset. Zaianne and Coran noted this immediately and settled them down in the main lounge, whereupon they hurried off and returned a little time later with a large steaming supper from the kitchen, which the team initially had looked upon as though it were poison, and then had devoured as though it were food. It was an oddly silent meal for all of its enthusiasm, and there was a nearly-visible cloud of doom hovering over the table even after those five enormous appetites had been slaked.

“Care to talk about it?” Coran asked delicately.

The look that they gave him would have blown a hole in a battleship.

“Guess not,” he muttered, surreptitiously checking to see if he still had all of his skin.

Zaianne sighed. “Right, I've seen that before. Up to the Queen's suite, the lot of you. Get a nice warm bath in, then sleep yourselves out. Come on, up, shoo! As my grandfather might put it, you've spent the whole day chasing a fine buck kepta, only to find upon making the kill that it had the wasting disease and was inedible. You've saved the rest of the herd from infection, but you're sore and tired and have nothing concrete to show for it. Come on—don't you make that face at me, young lady, I've seen better from my sister's pet burrikle, and it didn't even have a nose to wrinkle up like that!”

Grumbling and complaining, the Paladins were herded up to the hot tub, scrubbed and soaked, and then tucked into bed with the sort of efficiency that Coran hadn't seen since Allura's mother had died. “You're good at this,” he told her once Keith had been settled in.

She smiled, although there was little warmth in it. “I should be. Not only did I have to ride herd on my own brothers, but one of my aunts died suddenly in an accident when her own cubs were still small. Mother offered me up as a substitute parent, and it was just enough to keep their father from ending his own life. I had loved my aunt and uncle dearly, and so I did my job well. A little too well, perhaps.” Zaianne scrubbed at her eyes with one hand, eyes full of old anger. “Most definitely too well. Once the cubs were old enough, my Matriarch decided to put me in the running to be one of Zarkon's Consorts, thinking that I'd be a good mother for a clutch of princes. Possibly even a princess, for my own mother had had three other daughters.”

Coran choked and made an inarticulate sound of disgust. “How dreadful!”

She nodded. “Yes. I had no liking at all for the man and less for his witch, and I had no intention of sacrificing my own studies and freedom to gratify that old harpy's social ambitions. The Consorts, even after they've done their duty to the Throne, are never quite free after that. They are watched, constantly if covertly, by the Ghamparva, to make sure that they don't get any silly ideas about using anything that they might have learned against him. If they even look like they might be thinking about it, they are removed. Permanently. I was studying martial art forms, Coran. It was the one thing that I was good at.”

“Oh. Oh, dear.” Coran tugged at his mustache. “With Thace, right?”

Zaianne sighed, her eyes full of sorrow. “He was my favorite brother, and the only one who could keep up with me. We had planned to open an academy, once we'd completed our training. We had such dreams, he and I, for masters of the traditional combat forms are highly respected on Namtura. Foolish girl that I was, I went straight to my Matriarch and flat-out refused to waste my future on a royal assignation. She wasn't at all pleased with me.”

Coran puffed a faint laugh. “Allura had a few cousins like that. Strong-willed and fiery young lasses, all full of their own whims and wants, and dead-set on making their wishes come true whatever the cost. One of 'em fell in love with a pearl-fisher. Handsome young gent and as noble a heart as any lord, but smack at the bottom of the social ladder. Her mother wouldn't have her marrying that far beneath her, and his mother didn't relish having a hatchet-faced, snooty old harridan as a sister-in-law. The young lovers acted as young lovers do everywhere, I suppose, and the fight over those two bid fair to start a civil war.”

Zaianne chuckled. “How did the King sort that one out?”

“He didn't. Alfor was out with his team chasing a gang of assassins at the time, so the Queen took care of it.” Coran smiled fondly. “Wonderful woman. She took the opportunity to demote the girl's mother a bit, and promoted the young man to a recently vacated Barony. There was a smashing wedding, and a smashing punch-up between the drunken relatives, and then the happy couple eloped to a tropical world where they lived happily ever after.”

Coran smiled at Zaianne's laughter. “Since you're a Blade of Marmora and not a captive princess, Madame, I will assume that you weren't sent to the Center?”

Zaianne sobered. “Not for lack of trying on my Matriarch's part. My number came up, despite the jockeying of the rest of the Lineage for the honor. I had my own allies within the family, and they were as displeased with her decision as I was. Not out of any consideration for me, most of them, but because their own daughters weren't chosen. Ours was a large family, Coran. Not particularly aristocratic, but very rich and influential, and numerous enough to have feuds and factions of its own. I made shameful use of that, and when even severe pack strife couldn't make the old woman change her mind, Thace and I ran away. He'd had friends who would shelter us from the wrath of our family and the displeasure of the Emperor, he said. Friends indeed; a bare two weeks after our escape, we had been accepted as novices by the Order.”

Coran hummed sympathetically. “Ever find out what happened after that?”

Zaianne's mouth twisted in distaste. “The Emperor didn't particularly care which girl he got, just that he got one from our Lineage. It's a very ancient pact, Coran. All power in the Empire derives from the Emperor himself. Pack Law states that each Noble Lineage must marry into the Imperial Line in strict rotation, maintaining a balance of power and providing the Imperial Line with the best possible traits. That worked well enough when the descendants of Modhri the Wise ruled the Empire, but Zarkon will not die and will not abdicate. Not once in ten thousand years has he even thought of doing so. The Noble Lineages have learned to cope by continuing the tradition as best they can, offering up a daughter every fifteen to twenty standard years.”

Coran let out a low whistle. “That's a long time to wait, 'specially if you're ambitious.”

Zaianne scowled. “Refusals such as mine are rare. Rare and shameful, and the Matriarch had to scramble to produce a candidate that looked enough like me to pass. The closest in age and appearance was my second cousin, a quiet, well-mannered young lady who studied sculpture. I've always felt a little guilty about getting her into that situation.”

“I hope she's doing all right,” Coran murmured thoughtfully. “I mean, if Galra high society works anything like the Altean version, any sculpture she makes will be very popular with the royalists, eh?”

Zaianne let out a long sigh. “Oh, yes, I've checked. She's semi-retired, but her work is still highly sought after. It's said that once, when she was giving lessons at a prestigious studio, she became annoyed at one impertinent assistant and threw a pot of paint at his head. She missed, which created quite a splash all down one wall, and after she'd gone, the studio owner cut that section of wall out, framed it, and auctioned it off for an obscene amount of money. He did send her a portion of that, both to be fair and to avoid lawsuits. I believe that she framed the bank note he sent her. She could afford to, since she was already filthy rich at the time.”

Coran snorted a laugh. “She sounds like a fine lady, indeed. Will we have to worry about her royal brood, I wonder?”

“I don't see why not,” Zaianne said wearily. “We've already knocked into one of them. Lotor.”

Coran muttered a curse under his breath. “So, they _are_ related. _Quiznek_. Will you want to tell Keith?”

“Perhaps. One day. Not now.”

Coran nodded. “Best to let it lie. Were you ever going to introduce him to your side of the family, I wonder?”

Zaianne looked away, her expression pained. “If any of them survive the fall of the Empire, perhaps. My Lineage is very much invested in the stability of the Throne, Coran, and I have long since been declared not just dead, but nonexistent. Many of my relatives regard half-breeds as nonpersons in any case. We're better off not stirring up those embers. I am still young enough to take another mate, and to bear another clutch. If Khaeth wants siblings, then I will provide. In time.”

“In time,” Coran echoed soothingly, noting the brittle tone in her voice and knowing that she'd left out a great many details from her story. “Might I interest you in a cup of wine and a game of Dix-Par, then? At least until Lizenne and Modhri return from whatever business they have with our allies.”

Zaianne nodded. “Yes, and I thank you. Perhaps we could invite Celenast to join us, if he's done hunting silverware for the night.”

“I believe that he would be delighted.” Coran stroked his mustache again and offered her his arm. “Perhaps even the mice might be persuaded to pick up a hand or two, and there's a fresh batch of cookies in the jar. Shall we?”

She laid a graceful hand upon his arm, her long-ago deportment lessons shaking off the dust of years for this one night. “We shall, and let the best cardsharp win.”

 

A little time later, they had settled themselves on the floor of the bridge for a few hands of Dix-Par. Nasty was making a show of shuffling the deck, and the others were watching intently. Indeed, with four hands and a cultural focus on nefarious dealings, it was worth watching. “It's an art form,” Nasty was saying as he streamed the deck from hand to hand to hand while nibbling on a cookie at the same time. “I'm pretty good, but the real pros hold regular championships, and those have to be seen to be believed. My Granny was one of the great ones in her heyday, and she could stack five decks in her favor all at once while blindfolded. She's still the best pickpocket in the Untrusca Market, and crowds of street urchins trail after her, taking notes.”

Coran humphed, holding out one hand; a flick of Nasty's fingers had seven cards dropping neatly onto his palm. “A bit of an annoyance for her, I expect.”

“Nah, it's required. She tests them regularly, and grades their performance.” Nasty grinned and shelled out cards for Zaianne, himself, and the mice. “It's our version of schooling, is all. Our grouchy purple overlords make us send our kids to formal schools where they learn Empire-approved things, and they learn them, oh yes! Then we take what we learn and adapt our own style to take advantage of theirs. So long as the Empire gets its cut of the spoils, they don't care all that much if we filch a wallet or two. It's the smuggling and resistance-group work that they don't like.”

Zaianne hummed thoughtfully and examined her cards, pushing a small stack of cookies forward. “A little like some parts of Blade training. I wonder if I should suggest to Kolivan that he might talk to you about it?”

Nasty squinted at his cards, dropped one cookie back into the jar, and took another card. “Don't bother. I've got no authority to go around handing out craft secrets like that. I'm bending the rules to the breaking point already by adopting Varda and her team. It was beautifully-done, but it was just this side of forbidden.”

“ _Eeek!”_ Plachu squeaked. _“Eeek squeak squeak eep.”_

Nasty nodded glumly and accepted a pair of cookies from Coran, dropped them back into the jar, and passed him a pair of cards from the deck. “I know, but there have to be rules, if only so you know how and when to break 'em. Huh. This must be Tilla's deck. I'll trade a cookie for a Royal card. Any takers?”

Chuchule flipped him a card, and he passed over the cookie. Coran flicked him an amused glance. “Done something to it, has she?”

Nasty nodded, rearranging his cards. “I don't know how she did it, but no one can fiddle it but her. I  _know_ that I arranged the cards my way, but that's not how they're falling out. I may have to learn the language, if only to ask her how the hell she did that.”

“ _She won't tell you,”_ Lizenne's voice came through Coran's console, startling them all. _“I've been running with their pack for years, and she hasn't told me, either. You've left the comm channel wide open, Coran. Short-range only, but unwise nonetheless.”_

Coran leaped up, scattering cards and cookies. “Sorry about that, it's been a long day. What have you been up to?”

“ _Support team duties,”_ Lizenne replied, her image popping up on the screens. She looked tired and angry, and was just a bit pale under her fur. _“Tchak, Ophion, Tepechwa, and we were able to get the survivors out of those wrecks while Voltron dealt with that lab-born obscenity, and moved the comm station to a nice secluded spot a few stars over. Kolivan and his boys have been up to their eyebrows in the data that the station was carrying, and the rest of us have been busy with securing prisoners, stripping the wrecks, and treating the wounded. And a bit of research.”_

All of them heard the revulsion in her voice in that last statement. Nasty's eyebrows rose. “Picked up a monster chunk for study?”

She nodded, fury flashing golden in her eyes. _“I figured that if we were going to be seeing those things on a regular basis, I had better familiarize myself with the mechanics, the better to bung them up in the future. I am trying not to regret that decision.”_

“That bad, eh?” Zaianne asked, folding her cards and setting them down.

“ _Worse. Haggar knows a few of the basic techniques of_ Tahe Moq, _and has perverted that knowledge well past the point of atrocity. I will freely admit that I have been sick twice and flown into a rage three times, and if I ever come face to face with Haggar again, I will tear out her throat with my teeth, the bone spear's claim be damned. Are the Paladins all right, Coran? They took that monster apart with aetherics rather than weapons, and what they saw in there would have come as a terrible shock.”_

Coran pulled glumly at his mustache. “They made it back all right, but they were very upset about something, and weren't willing to talk it out. We got them fed, cleaned, and settled down for a nap, thank Zaianne for being a superb mother and all that, but I can't promise that they'll wake up in a good mood.”

Lizenne nodded. _“I wouldn't expect them to. I'm just glad that none of them were having hysterics. I've got a technique or two that will restore their equilibrium, and it might teach them a little more about themselves as well.”_

There was a _gronk_ from behind her, and she smiled. _“Also, leave the cards out. Tilla's tired and grumpy, too, and wants to ease that by winning all of your cookies.”_

Nasty grinned. “Not with this deck, but sure. Challenge accepted, you oversized lizard! I'd never thought I'd say this to a Galra, Lady, but it's nice to have you around.”

Lizenne's smile sweetened. _“The feeling is mutual, you scruffy little cutpurse. We'll be in shortly. Signing out.”_

Nasty chuckled and began gathering up cards and cookies. “Classy woman. Modhri's a lucky man.”

 

Hunk woke up feeling like a stripped transmission, aching in spots and worn-out in others, and he had a faint but painful headache. His gut gurgled uneasily, and his spirits were low for reasons that he didn't even want to consider right now, although they lurked in the back of his mind like an angry animal, ready to bite at any time. They might have already, he thought as he lurched out of bed; his dreams had been vague but ugly, and his brain felt like something had been gnawing on it.

He'd just gotten dressed when he noticed the glowing tag on his terminal, which turned out to be a note from Coran asking him to come up to the bridge when he felt ready to face the universe again. Hunk considered the universe, which was big and wide and full of crazy-bad things, then considered his bed, which was soft and nice and didn't demand anything from him. On the other hand, the universe also had cookies. Figuring that he could really use a cookie right now, he sighed and headed for the bridge. There, he was glad to see not only the cookies, but a pair of dragons, his villainy teacher, two adoptive aunts and an uncle, Coran, and the mice, all embroiled in a game of Dix-Par. As he watched, Nasty laid down his hand. “Hero's Courage,” he said with mild disappointment. “Good thing that those were my last cookies, huh?”

“Count your blessings,” Coran said dryly, laying down his hand. “All I've got is Soldier's Duty.”

“ _Eeek!”_ said Chulatt, pushing over the stand that held their cards, revealing an only slightly more exalted Proud Defenders, and then turning to blow a very small raspberry at Tilla, who sniffed disdainfully at this insult. Zaianne's and Lizenne's hands were little better, although Soluk had managed a very creditable Explorer's Luck. It still couldn't come close to Tilla's Ascending Prophet, but when she reached for the pile of cookies in the center, Modhri swatted her paw. 

“Jumping to conclusions again, love,” he said, and laid down a genuine Warrior Queen Triumphant that caused Tilla to squawk in astonishment and the others to burst into applause. Modhri merely smiled as he collected his due. “I'm warded, Tilla, remember? Your little mind tricks don't work on me. Good morning, Hunk. How do you feel?”

Hunk grinned at Tilla's chagrined expression and patted her nose, accepting the cookie that Modhri handed him with a nod of thanks. “Like the day after a major building fire. You know, when it's all wet and charred and saggy, with trash all over the place?”

Modhri nodded. “I've been there a time or two.”

“As have I,” Lizenne said with a grimace of disgust. “Not at all surprising, considering what you and your team did not so long ago. I'll want to know more about that.”

Hunk flinched at that reminder. Appetite abruptly gone again, he stuffed the cookie he'd been nibbling into a pocket for later. “It was bad. I mean,  _really_ bad. I don't want to talk about it, and neither will the others. It makes me queasy just thinking about it.”

She leaned back against the console, stretching out her long legs. “I know. Evil experienced up close and personal does that. Nevertheless--” she spoke the short, peculiar phrase that caused a cleansing wind to blow through all present, making them sigh in relief, “I must know what you did to destroy that Robeast. I will wait until all of you are present, but no longer.”

Hunk nodded, feeling better. Not all the way better, but better. “Okay.”

Tilla churred softly and nuzzled his cheek comfortingly.

The others joined them a little later, drawn and surly-looking until Lizenne's little cantrip blew the worst of it away. “Thank you,” Allura sighed, accepting a cookie, “that's much better.”

“Remind me to teach you all that spell at some point,” Lizenne said. “It's very simple and takes only a tiny bit of energy. Now speak, all of you. How did you destroy that monster?”

“Must we?” Allura said over the reluctant groans of the others, and winced at the petulant whine in her own voice.

“You must,” Modhri told them in a firm voice. “If it makes you feel any better about it, your aunt here threw a true five-star temper tantrum herself when she finished studying a chunk of that Robeast. I had a time of it calming her down.”

They stared at her in horror. Lance gurgled in revulsion. “You... you studied a piece of it? I mean, up close? You  _touched_ it? I really hope that you got rid of it right away, lady, 'cause if you still have it, I am never going on your ship again.”

Lizenne smiled grimly and shook her head. “I had to get a better idea of what went into its creation. No, I did not touch it with my bare hands, and I have since disposed of it by dropping it into a handy star. Even so, I was up all night giving that lab a very thorough cleansing. What did you do to break the thing? Show me your courage by speaking first, Lance.”

He gave her a dirty look, but that was not the sort of challenge that he turned down. He took a deep breath and began. “Okay, fine. So we were fighting the Robeast and not getting anywhere with the usual weapons. We all sort of agreed that Allura would boost Pidge and Pidge would crack its magic shield, and then we'd all sort of try our magic tricks on it. It... um... I think that we did it wrong.”

Lizenne shrugged. “You're alive and whole and it isn't. That makes what you did effective, if not perfectly right. Keith, are you any less of a hero than Lance is?”

Keith gave her a scowl from the circle of his mother's arm, but spoke up. “Allura gave us a boost. That went okay, we've done that before a couple of times, and Pidge hit the Robeast's shield right on the sweet spot. It wasn't easy, and it slowed Voltron down enough for the Robeast to catch us.”

Lizenne saw him shudder, and clutch at his mother's arm for comfort. “Hunk, I have never known you to shrink from doing your duty. Complain yes, skive off, no.”

Hunk groaned. “I haven't felt anything that bad since we got hit by Haggar's energy-draining whatchamacallit, back when we lost Shiro. Or maybe as bad as that hex that made us all sick for six months. I think... I think we panicked. I know I did. Under that shield was... OMG, it wasn't just bad, it was  _worse._ Worse than worse. There was some machine stuff in there that I could get a grip on, but it was... it was dirty, and it hurt, and it screamed--”

“I have _never_ felt anything so horrible!” Allura said in a sick voice. “There had been something alive in there, somehow, and it was being used as... as... as some kind of fuel, or as an animating force. It had no control over itself, and what was controlling it was... unclean.”

Pidge made a gagging sound, her face pale and faintly greenish. “It was Haggar. Her power, her controls. Big, big, powerful control hexes. How can that woman wake up every morning and possibly stand to be what she's made herself into for even a second? She  _ripped_ something's... something's soul right out of its body, crammed it into some kind of huge techno-freak machine that stank like the sewer under a slaughterhouse, and then sent it out to murder the universe, starting with us! It used to be a predator of some kind, but not like that! No natural predator is like that! You'd have to be a professional, University-trained, rabid vampire dark-universe undead were-tyrannosaur to even  _start_ learning how to be that horrible! I hit it with everything I had, and everybody else did too, and we sort of got it all muddled up, and that muddled  _it_ up inside, and it tore itself to pieces! We felt it die, and it hurt every second that it was dying, and we couldn't help it!”

Lizenne sighed, nodding sadly. “That is exactly what I saw, and then some. I will tell you now that the uncleanness that you perceived was the raw power derived from roughly a continent's worth of distilled Quintessence, twisted and perverted into something completely unnatural, and I am proud of my self-control in that I only threw up twice while studying it. There are a very great many religions in this universe that state very firmly that the manipulation and enslavement of a living thing's life force—its Quintessence—is sacrilege of the first order, and punishable by death. Take heart, children, for both Pidge and I have declared  _kheshveg_ against her, and you are a part of that oath, for you are of her pack, and the pack is as one. Keith's mother is a part of this as well, for she has been granted the privilege of  _ghren-kesh'vaaht,_ and her strength is ours. I know of no others who have as good a chance of destroying her as we do. In the meantime, we must prepare. It is entirely possible that we will be seeing more Robeasts in the future, and just as bad as this last one, or worse.”

She smirked at the chorus of groans and whimpers from the Paladins. “I know, it's dreadful, but it probably will happen, and possibly in groups. You must learn not to panic like that, and to shield each other, and to act effectively if you must employ an aetheric solution again. The Lions will help you, but there are limits to even their power. The stronger you are, the stronger the Lions will be.”

Lance waved his arms wildly, expressing horror and frustration in a way that no words could. No words, at least, other than his blurted, _“How?!”_

Lizenne stood up, beckoning with one hand. “I have some exercises that will point you in the right direction. They are quite simple, but very effective. You will learn things about yourselves, and about each other that you did not know before, and you will feel better for it. But first, lunch.”

“Lunch?” moaned Allura. “I don't have any appetite.”

Lizenne took a small bottle of something green out of her pocket and uncorked it, sending the clear, sweet, light-emerald scent of fresh peas into the air. All at once, the Paladins' mouths started to water. “Lunch,” Lizenne said, smiling at their yearning expressions. “The sintra bushes in the envirodeck are blooming, and we could all do with a dab of the pollen, yes? Very nutritious, and one should never perform magic on an empty stomach.”

 

“So, what are we going to be doing here?” Keith asked as they arranged five floor cushions into a circle in one of the rooms on the training deck. “Is this going to be anything like the exercises that you've had us doing?”

“Yes and no,” Lizenne replied, nudging Pidge's cushion into a better position with one foot. “This is a group exercise, one designed to let you share thoughts, opinions, and feelings, but it may wind up going deeper than you might think. That's not necessarily a bad thing; you are becoming as close as natural siblings, but you still know very little about each other, and the strength of Voltron's abilities depends upon the cohesion of its pilots. This exercise will bring you closer, and allow you to begin to understand. It's very simple and any of you can stop it at any time, so don't worry about getting stuck. Sit down.”

They did so, noting that she hadn't gotten a cushion out for herself. “You aren't staying?” Lance asked.

“Not beyond the initial stages. I am of your pack, but I am no part of the Lion-bond. I can't be,” Lizenne smiled wryly at them. “The Lions will not have me, and your bond with them is strong. I can advise, but I may not participate. This is your gift and your responsibility alone, and it is up to you to be good at it.”

Allura sighed and arranged her legs more comfortably on the big floor pillow. “I can remember when I was very little, when Father took me to the Paladin's Academy sometimes. I don't remember much, but I remember the crowds of cadets in training, how fast and strong they were, and how easily they worked with each other.” She giggled. “And how the newer teams fell all over themselves when they got it wrong. I had never thought that I would be one of them. Father and his team were like giants, and everyone looked up to them.”

Lance smiled enviously. “That must have been so cool. I thought Galaxy Garrison was pretty awesome when I arrived there that first time, even though there weren't any giant battle robots to play with. Then I found out that it was just like high school, only more so. Same bad cafeteria food, same cranky teachers, same student drama. The only thing that was different were the classes, and how many swearwords the gym coaches were allowed to shout at us.”

Allura laughed. “Perhaps. Even so, I do wish that there was some form of formal training still around. We've been doing well enough to survive, but it's all trial and error.”

“It does help that you have all been such fast learners,” Lizenne said critically, “you have a very great deal of potential, and the Lions have been extraordinarily generous with their gifts. Let us begin. Lights off.”

“Will we need to do the trance thing?” Hunk asked as darkness fell around them.

“Just a little bit,” Lizenne said. “Just enough to feel the Lions. They're right here with you, you know. See them.”

It was automatic. They looked up, and the darkness blazed with rainbow light as their inner eyes registered the Lions' presence, ancient, powerful, wise, and very interested.

“The Lions are always with you,” Lizenne murmured fondly, her voice taking on that smooth, gentle tone she used when she gave lessons in aetherics. “Allura, the black Lion has a gift for you. Accept it. Hold it in your hands.”

Allura held up her hands to the amethyst-limned giant, who passed her a small sphere of what appeared to be starshine, its pure light cutting through the shadows. It was warm in her hands, and it pulsed like a living heart, and it was beautiful.

“Very good,” Lizenne said. “Now give it a little push, not with your hands, but with your mind. Send it to Hunk, he's right next to you. Let him hold it for a little while.”

It took her a moment to figure out how to do that, and the ball of light took on a rosy tint as it floated gently over to rest in Hunk's broad palm. He smiled when he cupped it in his hands. “It feels like her,” he said wonderingly, “it's nice.”

“Yes,” Lizenne said. “She's a good girl. Driven, determined, dutiful, and a bit of a bully in spots, and a very fine young lady in all. Now give it a nudge of your own, Hunk, and pass it to Lance.”

Hunk had no trouble in sending it on, his own talents already expert at pushing things into place, and the ball took on a golden tone as it drifted into Lance's grasp. He gasped and nearly dropped it. “Hey! This thing feels... it feels like both of them!”

Lizenne chuckled. “Why so surprised? Every time you use your aetheric talent, you are manipulating your own _rhadi moq—_ that is, your own personal Quintessence. The very stuff of your soul, boy. Whatever you touch with it will carry that imprint, like a fingerprint or a scent, and it is for the best that you know the scent of your packmates. Pass it on; Pidge will want to study it.”

He did so, adding a clear sapphire tint to the ball, and Pidge caught it with ease. “Fascinating,” she said, rolling the ball from hand to hand. “It's a little like shaking hands with Osric, or the _Chimera._ It's an empathic trick, right?”

“Sort of,” Lizenne admitted, “at least at first. This is a little more sophisticated than that. Pass it on to Keith now, please. In a way, he needs this more than any of the rest of you do.”

“Why's that?” Keith asked, and then gasped in surprise as he felt the multicolored signature of his team.

“You have been too alone, and for too long,” Lizenne murmured sadly. “That is not good for a child of either race. You have been on the defensive for all of your young life, holding others at a distance so that when they inevitably leave, it does not hurt too much. It is a natural defense mechanism, but ultimately self-destructive; you have fallen into an acquired family and must now learn how to love them. This is possibly the most important lesson that any child must learn, and you have come to it late. For this, both your mother and I are sorrier than you could ever know. Begin now. Pass on the sphere, and let your new siblings know you.”

Keith was glad that it was dark, so that the others would not see him fighting down tears. The ruby-tinted ball of light drifted back to Allura, who caught it and drew in a sharp breath. “Lonely,” she whispered, “and so angry at the world. Oh, Keith.”

Hunk made a sympathetic noise when he received the ball. “He's not the only one. Wow, Allura, how do you manage to keep going through all that?”

“By not thinking about it, and by looking ahead,” Allura admitted. “Every time we triumph over the works of the enemy, we come that much closer to freeing Quolothis.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, catching the ball again. “Just keep that in mind. The sooner we deep-six Zarkon, the sooner I can go home, too... huh. You're handling this better than I'd thought, Hunk.”

Hunk managed a smile. “If you're busy enough, you don't dwell on bad situations. Grandma taught me that.”

Pidge caught the ball next and rolled it between her palms. “Your Grandma is a smart lady, Hunk. We're all homesick, but we've been too busy having adventures to feel it.”

Keith took possession of the ball with mixed feelings. He was a private person by nature and didn't like the idea of sharing his own inner self with others, but there was something strangely seductive about the feelings he was receiving from the others. It was _acceptance,_ he realized, from Hunk especially, which was something that he'd seen very little of since his father had died. They didn't care that he was only half-human, or had been orphaned by the whims of fate, or that he lived in a shack in the desert, or that he was an army brat, living off of a dead uncle's pension. They wanted _him,_ himself, his presence, his courage, his attitude, right here, right now, part of the pack forever. He swallowed hard and had to spend a moment searching for his voice. When it came out, it was a little rough. “Is it my imagination, or is thing getting stronger?”

“Every time you touch it, you enhance the impression that you leave on it. Just a little, but everything of this nature is significant,” Lizenne said, sounding faint and distant. Remember that no one here will hurt you, and you can stop at any time. It is better to continue, and to know what you see for the truth. Just a little more, Keith. Pass the sphere on. It is a gift, both in the giving and the receiving, that can never be stolen from any of you.”

He passed it on, and on again when it came to him, and again, and none of them noticed when Lizenne left them to it. They were far too busy learning, sunk deeply in their trance, the emotions running deeper with every circuit. They learned how much of Keith's bad temper stemmed from deep-rooted fears of abandonment, and fear of the alien side of him that lurked, ever-present, on the far side of his genome. They saw through eyes that saw better in dim light than theirs did, heard with his sensitive ears, smelled with his sharp nose, and tensed—ever so slightly—even as he did when things moved suddenly, his instincts twitching at the possibility of threat or prey. They felt the cleansing fire of his Lion-gifted talent, and were awed by it.

They learned how deeply Hunk's courage ran, and his compassion, and the vast capacity for love in his heart that translated itself into his talents. He could sense a pure heart, they realized, and his natural attraction for such manifested in a need to feed them and make them comfortable. They felt his strength, his steadiness, and the burgeoning genius with machinery, his drive to make every part of his creations fit together in harmony, whether it was spices or sprockets.

Allura was _fascinating,_ being the only full-blooded alien among them, startlingly similar and yet astoundingly different from them in many ways. They felt her own remarkable physical strength and endurance, her peculiar affinity with the Castle, and the differences in her senses of smell and taste that made things like numvill taste good to her kind. They felt the strange subtle pleasure that came from shifting her shape, and even saw the great rarity of the natural aetheric reflector that hung just below her heart, that could draw in and release an energy that they were only just beginning to understand.

They beheld the awesome complexity of Pidge's mind, and the mingled frustrations and feelings of superiority that geniuses often felt when having to deal with those who could not match their mental prowess. It was fascinating to see the world through her eyes, not just from her perspective as a computer wizard, but as a short person, and laughed with her when they realized how well she had turned her small stature into a weapon. They envied her a little for her ability to speak unaided to machines, and gazed in awe on the special place she had found where machine and organism were one and the same.

In Lance, they saw that his silly antics were born of deep insecurities, not merely from the huge responsibilities that had been thrust upon them, but stemming from being a minor member of an enormous and rambling family. He was the youngest of a large brood of successful siblings, and the pressure to do as well or better had been immense. A plethora of younger cousins had given him the unenviable experience of being a middle kid as well, forcing him into a position of both precarious authority and a peculiar powerlessness that had left him deeply unsure of his own best qualities. They did see his native talent for sewing, and pointed out how closely it resembled his newfound talent for Healing; was it so different, mending a tear in one's trousers, or a tear in the skin beneath? It was not, although he did observe that the owner of the skin did tend to yell a lot more than the trousers did.

The ball circled again, and again, and again, taking them deeper. It wasn't even a ball they were passing around anymore, but a wave, or perhaps it was a wheel turning, flowing through them in a steady rotation. It was hard to stop. How could they, when five whole universes had opened up within them, warm and alive and full of wonders? They could see the bonds that connected them to their Lions now, and the bonds that held the Lions to each other. They did not speak now, but merely sat there, experiencing each other with every sense they had... and making discoveries. How wonderful they could be in the eyes of their teammates, for example. How beautiful Allura was, inside and out, even at her bossiest. The grace of her smallest movements, the pink centers of her eyes, so different from a Human's, and yet so very right. And yet... and yet Keith held a different sort of grace, and an admirable defiance in his stance, and how intriguing it was to watch for the alien side of him, so rarely glimpsed and all the more wondrous for it. Hunk was the most comfortable person in the world to be around, and how he seemed to ease the air just by standing there. He was always there, smiling, as steady as a mountain. A person to listen to, a person who would listen, a person to laugh with. How interesting Lance was, even adorable in his awkwardness, still gawky from his last growth spurt and yet full of hidden depths. There was talent there, and a certain genius, although not measurable in the common way, and they loved him for it. How grand Pidge was, the quintessential great thing in a small package, and how compact and well-formed that package was. How strong she was in head, hand, and heart, how quick she was on her feet and in her thoughts. _By the Ancients,_ someone said, _you're all so beautiful._

_So are you,_ the reply came easily.

_I wish that we could see Shiro this way,_ someone whispered.

_Shiro,_ the others murmured sadly,  _where is Shiro?_

As one, they turned their inner eyes out to the starry vastness of the universe. The Lions turned to look also, and for the second time in their lives, they saw the all-encompassing net of  _Tahe Moq_ linking each star together. There was one thin thread in that infinite lacework, one tiny strand of silk that linked into the mighty heart of the black Lion, but it hummed a deep blue-purple as hot as a star, and as one, they reached out to catch it.

_Shiro?_ They asked, tugging on that delicate line, and what came through it shocked them to the core.

… _I'm here..._ came a familiar voice, far, far away and half-lost in the darkness.

_Where,_ insisted the wheel of light, flaring ferocious red and green.  _Where are you?_

… _I'm here..._ the voice came again, just a little stronger.

_WHERE?_ The Paladins demanded, pulling hard on that thread of cerulean.

Pain abruptly flooded their senses, but that pain was not theirs, nor was the exhaustion, the disorientation, or the helpless terror that accompanied it. They had a vision of hands, one of metal and one of flesh and bone, both clawing uselessly at the thin, eye-level slit in what appeared to be an iron coffin. It was moving, slowly but inexorably backwards toward something that reeked of mortal doom. Through the slit, they caught a brief glimpse of a cloaked and hooded figure high up upon a floating platform. There was a glint of silver hair, a gleam of eyes like cairn fires, a sharp gesture accompanied by a dreadful cry of triumph, and a sudden, soul-wrenching agony that cast any and all other considerations into oblivion. There was a long and terrible darkness in which they were lost, frozen, helpless, and alone, and then movement. A long sensation of moving very fast, unstoppably, and then a sharp halt. The vision dissolved into fragmented images at that point. A feeling of movement without conscious control. Red rage. Blank terror. A sensation like that of walking on panes of thin glass, crackling and shattering underfoot. A sweep of an arm through a card house made of crackers. Smell of burning. Sounds of distress. Absolute inability to stop. A cry from the very heart of their being.

_**HELP ME!** _

The Lions screamed in rage; the very substance of the Castle shook with it, and the trance shattered like spun glass. It did not shatter the grip Paladins had on that one special thread of violet-blue, and they rose as one, with one purpose, and one destination. There could be no doubts now, and they broke into a run.

 

“My word, did you hear that?” Coran gasped, gripping the edge of his console hard to steady himself.

“Heard it? I felt it right through the decking.” Zaianne glanced back at the elevator that took Allura down to the black Lion's hangar. “That was all five of them, and all of them killing-mad. What sort of exercise were you drilling them in?”

Lizenne, who had been keeping them company from one of the defense-drone stations, was now sitting bolt upright and looking rather startled. “Just one of the more advanced bonding exercises. They shouldn't have stumbled over anything worse than an emotional tangle. What's that sound?”

There was a distant rumble in the outside hall, and it was coming closer.

“Sounds almost like a hundred-year glardiwhoop beast,” Coran mused. “Lovely animals, quite large, and the wool made the very best possible winter coats. Every twenty local years, they'd grow a new torso segment, complete with a new pair of legs. You could always tell the age of the beast by the sound it made when it hit a full gallop.”

Zaianne rolled her eyes. “Coran, exactly how would--”

The bridge doors hissed open suddenly, and the Paladins stampeded through it wearing identical expressions of furious determination. In the lead was Allura, who made a beeline toward the pilot's dais, and before either of them could react, she had seized the Galra woman around the waist and tossed her bodily off of the platform. Zaianne rolled and came to her feet easily, but she made no move to interfere; the young Altean princess had summoned the starcharts and was swinging what looked to be the entire universe around her head by the tail as she sought out one specific point.

“Princess!” Coran blurted as the constellations spun dizzily around her. “What are you doing?”

“Finding the place where we are going,” Allura ground out, giving all of space another spin before homing in on a modest little binary system. “And now I have found it. We are going. Lay in those coordinates, Coran.”

“But, Princess--”

“ _Now,_ Coran,” Allura said in the Voice That Will Be Obeyed.

His fingers moved over the controls almost of their own accord. “All right, but I really should tell you--”

“ _NOW,_ Coran! I am opening the wormhole!” Allura snapped.

“Where are we going?” Lizenne asked, leaping to her feet. “The _Chimera--”_

Pidge grunted in exasperation and sought out the Castle's stepsister-ship with her mind. “Follow us,  _Chimera!”_ she commanded, and there were yelps of surprise and protest from the communicator as the big Hanifor ship started doing things that Modhri hadn't told it to do. For a long moment, there was a charged blue silence as the two ships traversed a large stretch of time and space, and then they were orbiting a pair of yellow dwarf stars. A few planets were visible from their position, toy globes shining like lamps in the double sunlight. “Where are you,” Allura hissed, scanning those distant planets with terrible intensity, “where are you?”

Keith pointed wordlessly off to the left, and all of them turned to focus on one small bluish-green dot in the distance. “Take us there, Coran,” Allura commanded.

He smiled nervously and did as he was told. “Well, that's all right, then. We were going to be heading there anyway. Pretty place, for all that it's got hardly any oceans to speak of. Can't really call a weed-choked swamp an ocean, y'know, even if it takes up almost half the planet. Rather nice people there, too, last I'd heard.”

“It doesn't matter,” Pidge snapped, eyes glued to the screens as the dot became a ball, and then a planet. Wetland and upland and a webwork of glinting river systems rolled past as they searched for exactly the right spot. “Shiro's there, and he needs help. We are going to help him.”

“Is he?” Coran said. “Well, that's a pleasant surprise, and handy too. You see—oh.”

“ _Quiznek!”_ Lance spat in horrified disgust.

Down on the planet below was a burning city, and wading through the wreckage was something very large, dark, and terrible. Allura magnified the image, and again, until they could see it clearly. The workmanship was unmistakable.

“Another Robeast!” Hunk snarled angrily.

“That's what I was trying to tell you,” Coran said, a little stiffly. “We got a distress signal. I was just about to page you all, and then the Lions roared, and then you came up and took things into your own hands. Your timing's excellent, even if your method's impolite.”

“Sorry, Coran, but we received a distress call as well,” Allura said, her tone apologetic, although she never took her eyes off of the screens. “Shiro's down there, and if you'll excuse us, we need to deal with that freak.”

“Be my guest,” he said, but they were already running for the chutes.

Lizenne watched them go with a curious look on her face. “They shouldn't have been able to do that.  _Tajvek!_ To make contact with someone that heavily shielded, and through no more potent a spell than a simple sharing of auras. Every time I give them a taste of aetheric training, they achieve in hours what took me weeks to get the hang of. What will we be unleashing upon the universe, I wonder, when their kindred peoples burst through the boundaries of their home systems?”

Zaianne shook her head and reclaimed the pilot's posts. “Nothing like these,” she murmured. “This team is special. Unique. I can feel it. I felt it before Khaeth was born, back on Earth. The Universe has not seen their like in ten thousand years, and may not see such again for another ten thousand. It's appropriate, I suppose. Our enemies are another ten-thousand-year uniquity.”

“I do not doubt it,” Lizenne said, and watched the screens as the Lions launched. “I had better get back to my ship. Modhri will be wondering what's going on, and so will the dragons. Hah. Perhaps they'll be able to explain it to me.”

Coran leaned on his console with a quirk of an eyebrow in her direction. “If you get anything better than _'gronk'_ out of them, I'd love to hear it. Connecting the ships now, Lizenne.”

“Thank you,” she replied, heading for the lifts, “I'll keep in touch.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will our heroes defeat the Robeast? Will they find Shiro? Will the mice finally take over the universe as we all suspect they've been planning from the beginning?! Will the authors' attempts to be funny in the ending notes succeed or fail miserably?! Tune in next time, to find the answers to maybe half these questions!
> 
> Kudos and comments, as always, are adored.


	8. Conflict And Resolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, the next chapter a few days early as promised! Everyone have their seatbelts buckled? Good! Hold on tight and enjoy the ride!

Chapter 8: Conflict and Resolution

 

Watching the screens no less avidly was the Emperor himself. He and Haggar had come to this miserable little backwater planet to witness this battle in person, the better to pick up the pieces when the Robeast had finished. His Generals had not liked his sudden departure from the Center, nor had they liked it that he had come out here essentially alone, and many other officials had not liked it that he had simply dropped the vital business of running the Empire into a heap on the floor and left without warning. He did not care. He would judge their competence when he returned by how they had gotten along without him and promote and demote as he saw fit. It did not do to let his underlings get complacent. He had chosen to take General Pendrash along to stop their whining, for the sensible old fellow had been among the very few who had refrained from annoying him with their petulant protests. Even when Zarkon had chosen a Courier craft rather than a warship, he had not said a word, other than “yes, Majesty”, which showed intelligence; after all, if events proceeded well, Zarkon would be piloting himself home in the black Lion.

Haggar was less optimistic, and he was used to that. It was unwise to celebrate a victory before the battle began, but Zarkon was inclined to be hopeful. Her newest creation was magnificent. It was huge and wondrous mighty, more or less man-shaped and glossy-black from head to toe, lined here and there with traceries of deep blue-violet. It had a voice like the death of stars and the grace of a large predator, and what it touched with its hands was destroyed instantly. She had given it other weapons, of course, but the hand had been her first gift to the unworthy creature that had served as the base for the Robeast. It had turned this gift against her, struck her with it, and now it knew its rightful master once more. As he watched, that arm slammed down, annihilating a large building with no more effort than it took to swat an insect. It roared again, and three other buildings collapsed from the vibrations of that cry.

“They're here, your Majesty,” General Pendrash said quietly, tapping a control that shifted the view in one screen skyward, where five feline shapes were descending.

“Of course they are,” Zarkon rumbled. “How could they not be? The Lions have an instinct, and home in on such things as this.”

“Moths to a flame,” Haggar muttered, eyeing the Lions warily. She had felt something odd just a little time ago. Not in that her subject had cried out for help to whatever metaphysical forces it believed in—Robeasts animated by sentient subjects always did that before their personalities sublimated—but that it had been heard. That was impossible. It would have taken a full coven of potent witches to have detected anything through her shields. The current Paladins had only one Technomage... as far as she knew. Ancient memories stirred for the first time in eons, and she remembered the gifts that the Lions had given Zarkon's teammates. Paltry tricks, compared to the ones that she herself could call upon, but it wasn't a good idea to make assumptions. Not with this bunch. She humphed and added, “But the embermoths of the Felchar volcanic badlands often start brushfires, in order to feed on the ashes.”

Zarkon cast her an amused look. “Do you doubt your own creations?”

Haggar snorted. “Hardly, but the Paladins have prevailed against them too often for my comfort.”

The Emperor smiled indulgently; he was too eager to see the imminent battle to chide her for her failures at the moment. “We might look upon this as an experiment, then. Have they become sensitive enough to see your latest project for what it is, and have they developed the ability to discern where it is more merciful to end a life, rather than to save it?”

She returned his smile with a smirk of her own. “A worthy test. Let us watch.”

 

It had been a great city, once, with wide, tree-lined boulevards and tall, graceful buildings, beautiful bridges spanning crystalline rivers, broad parks and public pools where families had played in the summer sun. It was a smashed and burning ruin now, the survivors fleeing from their crushed neighborhoods down rubble-strewn streets however they could, and still the monster circled relentlessly, destroying whatever came within its reach.

“Oh, _crud,”_ Hunk hissed in anguish at the sight of the damage. “That's gonna take weeks to clean up, guys. Months. Years. I don't even want to think about how many people died down there.”

“Too many,” Keith said grimly, “way too many. Shiro's still alive, though, I can feel him. He's down there somewhere, and we've got to stop that thing before we can help him, or anyone else.”

“Close,” Pidge said, her nerves humming at their long-lost friend's proximity. “He's really close.”

Lance gulped. “So's the Robeast, guys. It's spotted us.”

The monster had paused in its path and was looking up at them now, six protruding lenses like spider's eyes gleaming in the sunlight. It had no mouth, but it screamed anyway, a deep, bone-shaking roar like the despair of mountains. Titanic muscles bulged in its thighs and back, and it sprang high into the air to meet them, the right arm seething with amaranthine forces. The Lions scattered as a huge forceblade snapped into being around the enormous hand and swung in a lethal arc, the air itself catching fire at the edges.

“Holy crow, what the heck did she make this one out of?” Lance said, struggling to keep his Lion out of range of that attack—the Robeast was far faster than anything that size should be. “One of Kolivan's guys, maybe?”

“I hope not,” Hunk said, sending his Lion into a dive to avoid a driving fist like a black comet, “it's a big universe, there's gotta be some other sorts of space ninja out here—whoa! Laser hand! Laser hand! Allura, watch your back!”

Allura was able to evade the slash that might have cut her Lion in half, but she wasn't able to avoid a backhanded blow from the other fist, and the impact knocked her out of the air with a cry of pain that had the others rushing to help, whizzing around the Robeast's head in an attempt to keep it from pressing its advantage. The black Lion, struggling for control, smashed through one of the few buildings still standing and came to rest in what had probably been a stadium of some sort. Allura, badly shaken by the impacts, had to lie still in her seat for a moment while the cockpit spun dizzily around her.

“Princess? Princess! Are you okay?” she heard Lance shouting, and it took her a little time to remember how to speak.

“Still alive, Lance,” she managed, and gripped the control beams with hands that shook; the Lion groaned but responded, heaving itself out of tons of wreckage, “I'm coming.”

“That's good,” Keith ground out, “'cause we're really going to need you up here. This thing is really tough and—aaahgh!”

The monster roared again, a sonic barrage that made the air around it ripple visibly and caused Allura's screens to fuzz and the Lion's engines to falter. Black lurched and tumbled awkwardly in his flight path, and Allura was only barely able to avoid the crumbling stump of another skyscraper. The other Lions fell out of the sky like stones, and were swatted further when the Robeast performed a pirouette worthy of a professional acrobat and knocked them all clean out of the city. The sonic weapon was short-range only, Allura noted as she fought for stability, but devastating within its effective area. “Team!” she called, hearing their distress, “Are you all right?”

“Holy _crap,_ crazy-ass monster space ninja!” Lance snarled shakily, but he sounded largely intact.

Pidge growled a few choice words of her own, followed by, “This wasn't an animal, guys. This one can think, and whoever he was, he was good at it.”

Keith groaned. “Yeah. We're going to have to form Voltron--”

“Right now!” Hunk burst in. _“Move,_ Allura, it's going for your Lion!”

Hunk's warning was timely. Allura's screens were suddenly full of a vast black shape, and for the next several, very crowded minutes, she was forced to put her Lion through a series of gut-wrenching evasive maneuvers that ended only when Lance encased the Robeast's head in ice. This only slowed the creature momentarily and it shattered the casing with another bone-rattling bellow, but it gave them enough time to assemble the Lions, and to cloak them for good measure. This, at least, seemed to confuse the monster somewhat, and it turned slowly in a circle, seeking them.

“Love that invisibility,” Keith muttered half to himself. “Let me take it from here, guys. Pidge, I'm going to need that shield.”

“Gotcha,” Pidge said, sliding her bayard into its socket, even as the sword snapped into being with a flash and a glimmer.

That sudden glint and the sound of two wing sections becoming a shield caught the Robeast's attention, and it turned to face them just in time to collect Voltron's shoulder square in the chest. It was knocked back a considerable way by this body-slam, heels leaving long trenches through a ruined airport, but it recovered quickly, generating its own forceblade and dropping into a fighting stance that struck Keith as strangely familiar. He had no time to wonder about it, for the monster attacked, and he was forced to concentrate on not getting them all sliced to pieces. The Robeast was incredibly strong and agile, and it fought with a grim precision that Voltron had difficulty in matching. And skill. Ye gods, but this thing had skills. Keith could feel the red Lion shudder around him every time the Robeast's laser sword smashed into his own, and it wasn't long before the thing had the measure of his own skills. Keith was good, but this creature was better, and it was with a creeping sense of horror that he realized that its style was familiar. He _knew_ that stance, the reliance on the armored right arm, the very position of the fingers at the base of the blade, and the pattern of blows followed by an attempt to knock Voltron's legs out from under him was a dead giveaway. Keith had sparred with someone whose style was identical.

“Guys,” he said, hearing the dread in his own voice and not caring, “can you feel where Shiro is?”

There was a pause, in which Keith fended off another series of slashes and a lunge. “He's close,” Allura said nervously, “very close. I might almost say that he's right in front of us... oh, Ancients, no!”

Pidge made a gargling noise that Allura thought might be a slightly mispronounced Gharuskan third-level blasphemy. “That _is_ Shiro! She turned him into a Robeast!”

“What are we gonna do, guys, I can't kill Shiro!” Hunk moaned miserably.

“I can't kill Shiro either!” Lance yelled back, his voice full of chagrin. “How are we supposed to deal with this—”

“Laser hand, laser hand!” Hunk yelped, forcing Voltron into an athletic backward leap when Voltron's sword faltered. _“Focus,_ people! How the heck are we supposed to do this? We can't kill him, but if we don't do something, he'll kill us!”

Pidge hissed. “He's shielded, of course. I don't know... If I break that, can you burn the control hexes out, like you did for Kelezar?”

“Maybe, but even if we all survive that, he's still a Robeast,” Keith panted. “He's not gonna be able to fly a Lion like that, guys. He sure won't fit in the Castle. I don't think that he can even speak. And when his power core runs out...”

Robeasts required enormous amounts of purified Quintessence. Getting more would be not only very difficult, but totally unethical.

“Worst gas mileage ever,” Lance observed grimly. “Soluk would kick our butts if we even asked about that. What are we going to do?”

The Robeast roared, coming close to rattling Voltron apart. Keith could hear, under the bottomless menace of the sonic weapon, an undercurrent of despair that twisted in his own heart like a knife. His greatest friend, his adoptive older brother, the one man who had filled the void left behind when his father and uncle had died, the fearless leader and unshakable hero that he and his team had trusted and admired, twisted and distorted into this half-mechanical obscenity. He could not deliver a killing strike, and yet he would have to. _Evil,_ he thought, remembering the colossal reek of it that he'd encountered in the previous Robeast, and the foul echo of it that he'd burned out of Kelezar so spectacularly in the Temple Arena. What could he do? Even if he burned it clean, burned the whole planet clean, there was no way to separate the pure essence of Shiro out of its ghastly casing, was there?

_There is,_ said a voice that was curiously like and yet unlike his own, crackling and rustling like a bonfire. He felt heat in that voice, and smelled a faint whiff of burning, and knew that his Lion spoke.  _We have given you these gifts._

There was no denying that. He paused to block a massive blow with his shield, one that forced Voltron back a step or two regardless. He felt the impact in his bones. “How do we use them?” he whispered back.

He felt a strange sensation, like a chant in his blood. Not in words; the Lions weren't good at words. They were better at images and sensations, and one presented itself to him now: the last time that he and Lance had performed one of the paired aetheric exercises that Lizenne had set them. He had felt his and Lance's powers turning together like a wheel, in an endless cycle of _:purify/heal:—:purify/heal:—:purify/heal:_ Around and around, like a heartbeat. Their most recent exercise had held an element of that, but it had been much more complex, like... like... _:empower/ramify/strengthen/purify/heal:..._

“Guys, I think that my Lion is telling me something,” Hunk said hesitantly. “I think... I think that we can get Shiro out of there.”

“Is that possible?” Lance asked plaintively.

“I think that it may be,” Pidge said with growing eagerness. “I think we can! We just have to not panic this time, and do it logically.”

Keith grunted, parrying a series of blade strikes from the monster. “Working together, yeah. I'm willing to give it a try.”

“That's all very well,” Allura put in, “but even if we are able to pull him out of that thing, it will be as a mass of raw Quintessence. We have no way of containing that, and I'm not sure if the Castle has anything that will. Perhaps...”

They paused. This was Galra technology, augmented by whatever Haggar had gleaned from the Altean side ten thousand years ago. They also had a Galra witch who had learned a thing or three about Altean technology. Lance hit the comm button on his control board with a fist. _“Lizenne!”_ he yelled.

“ _Speaking,”_ she replied tensely. _“What do you need?”_

“Do you have anything that'll contain Quintessence?” Lance asked, “Like a jam jar, or a bucket or something?”

There was a surprised pause, but her answer filled him with hope. _“Yes, actually, my ship's lab came with a couple of portable canisters--”_

“Where's my bukkit?!” Lance yelled, clinging to the control beams as Keith evaded another rush.

“ _What?”_ Lizenne asked, puzzled.

“No time to explain, just get in the car!” Lance added.

“ _Car?”_

Hunk let out an exasperated snort. “Lance, it's my job to spout old memes and catchphrases when I'm freaking out.”

“Yeah, yeah, but you weren't doing it, so I am,” Lance retorted. “Lizenne, grab that bucket and get down here, we're going to try something and we need you to hold the can. It's really important, so hurry, okay?”

“ _I'll be right there,”_ Lizenne said, earning the Galactic Medal of Smartness in Lance's mind for not asking any more questions.

 

Indeed, Lizenne had a faint inkling of what might happen in the near future, and ran as fast as she could to the  _Chimera's_ science deck. She had not bothered to use those two canisters yet, nor had she intended to do so, being of the opinion that Quintessence belonged in the places that Nature saw fit to put it. They were in mint condition, she saw when she opened the cabinet, and she grabbed the larger of the two and sprinted for the lifts. Along the way, she spotted her bone spear propped against one wall and grabbed it out of habit. Some small part of her mind reminded her that she had left the spear in the  _Chimera's_ training deck that morning, but the larger portion of her mind declared that to be immaterial right now; there was a need, and this bit of odd juxtapositioning saved time. The lift whisked her down to the shuttle bay, and she tossed the spear and the canister into the smallest, fastest lander they had and launched, ignoring Modhri's startled queries in favor of plummeting down through the planet's atmosphere as fast as the lander could go.

It was a simple enough descent despite the billows of smoke that were flooding the skies above the ruined city, almost volcanic in their density; fully half of the place was on fire at the moment, and the rest had been pounded to gravel beneath the feet of the warring titans. They were visible, barely, as a pair of gigantic shadows spotted with flares of light as they strove together in the remains of the city center. She set her lander down on what was left of a large shopping center and keyed her comm. “I'm here,” she said, “what do you need me to do?”

“ _You've got the bucket?”_ Keith asked, just barely audible over a loud clang that sounded like the hammer of a god hitting its corresponding anvil.

“I do,” she said, glancing warily up at the resulting blue-violet flash from above.

“ _Good,”_ Keith said breathlessly. _“Just... just stand there, and hold it while we do this. Okay, guys, I'm going to put away the sword. Pidge, you ready to drop the shield?”_

Lizenne stared at the comm in disbelief. “What are you people up to?”

There was a smashing sound from above that echoed off of the sky, and she flinched at the pressure of it on her ears. Allura spoke next, although not to her. _“All right, let's do this. Pidge, the shield first. I'll pull power from the creature's core and purify it, and pass it on to the rest of you.”_

“ _Yeah,”_ Hunk panted, _“and Pidge and I'll mess up its works, Keith'll sift Shiro out of the rest of that mess--”_

“ _And I'll move him into the bucket,”_ Lance said, sounding very nervous. _“We're going to squeeze this thing out like a lemon.”_

“ _Lance, don't you dare compare that ugly freak to the noble citrus ever again,”_ Hunk said, sounding deeply offended.

“ _Yell at him about fruit later, Hunk,”_ Pidge said sharply, _“we've got to immobilize it before we can do anything. I'm dropping the shield, Keith. Let's see if you ever got the hang of that wrestling hold.”_

Lizenne was not an expert where it came to Quintessence-powered cyber-aetheric mechanisms, but she did know that once they had been invested with the motivating force, there was no reversing that action. According to all that she knew to be true, Shiro was doomed. According to her observations of this particular team of unique youngsters, nothing at all could be considered impossible. She popped her lander's canopy and climbed cautiously out, leaning her spear on the hull and taking up a position on the peak of the hill. Winds made hot from the burning city sang around her, smelling of destruction and destiny, and she cradled the canister in her arms, awaiting whatever came next. All she could see of either combatant was their feet, dancing like nightmare creatures in dreams; lunging, sidestepping, circling in a peculiar parody of a spiral dance, each footfall sounding like thunder. Sounds from above suggested blows and grappling, bell-like clangs and the creak of strange alloys under extreme stress. There were flashes of blue-purple light from above, and showers of sparks, and a deep-toned roar that made the earth shake beneath her feet.

A rattle of broken masonry nearby made her look around, and she saw a dusty, blood-smeared survivor coming up the hill of rubble beside her. A Teravinchan, she saw, and reached out a hand to help him up. The Teravinchans were a long-standing ally of the Empire, and the poor fellow had a right to be horrified by the death dance that had overtaken his city.

“What is happening?” he whispered, flinching at the mostly unseen wrestling match going on in the distance. “Lady, please, what is happening? What have we done to deserve this?”

She shook her head sadly. “Nothing at all, at a guess. Zarkon and Haggar simply needed a populous place to set their abomination loose, the better to bait out their greatest enemy.”

The wind parted the smoke billows just long enough to provide them with a glimpse of the combatants, shining in the thunder light like two opposing gods before the fumes concealed them again. The Teravinchan, mouth agape and crest flat against his dorsal ridge in awe and in terror, stumbled back a few steps.

“You aren't people to them, you know,” she continued over the sound of their striving. “You're just furniture, and a handy source of goods and wealth. See how they cast away the lives of innocents to obtain such a spectacle.”

Her companion made a gwozzling sound of horrified outrage, and flared his broad furry ears at her in a show of defiance. “We will issue a formal complaint! We will demand reparations! We are a member in good standing with the Empire, and we have rights!”

The look of ironic pity she cast him shut him up. “Do you? I wish you luck, then, but I very much doubt that you will obtain even a form-letter of condolence. There is no lasting profit in backing a tyrant. Leave now, sir. There is nothing you can do here at this time. Go and help your people, dig them out of the rubble with your bare hands if you must, show your people that even an ordinary person may turn heroic when there is a need, but do not linger here. However that battle over there might turn out, the Emperor's forces will swarm this world, and they will not be particularly sympathetic.”

There was a mind-boggling sound of giant's feet ripping through landscape, a vast groan of engines, and the two great constructs fell together out of the sky, trailing smoke. It was an awesome sight, the great dark Robeast forced to its knees, Voltron's left arm locked around its neck and the right pinning the Robeast's blade hand tight across its chest, the mighty battle robot using its weight to keep the Robeast from twisting free. The Robeast uttered a scream of black fury that shook the very air, and it clawed great furrows in the earth with its free hand. The Teravinchan sagged to his knees at the sight, unable to believe what his eyes were telling him.

“Go,” Lizenne said calmly, her quiet tone causing him to stare at her. “You do not want to be here when this match is finished.”

Sensibly, the Teravinchan fled.

 

Keith uttered a roar of his own, keeping a tight grip on the monster's blade arm, his vision red-tinted with the strain of it. Alarms whooped and buzzed in harmony with him; Voltron was doing his best, but this thing was his match for sheer brute power, and every time it roared, Voltron's connectors rattled dangerously in their sockets. “Any time, Pidge!” he yelled desperately.

“Yeah. Is she there?” Pidge replied breathlessly.

“On that hill over there,” Lance grunted. “Seriously, any time, Pidge.”

Hunk wheezed. “Hurry! I don't know how much longer we can hold him!”

The Robeast jerked hard against their hold on it, attempting to push Voltron over backward and trying to hook one knee around the battle machine's leg. Pidge gripped the control beams tightly to keep herself from being hurled from her seat, and gasped out, “Allura, I need a boost!”

Allura queried the black Lion, and didn't much like the answer. “I can only give you a little one. Voltron can't spare much.”

“Every little bit helps, Allura,” Pidge said, and then hissed between her teeth when the power surge hit her. Opening her perceptions, she beheld the screaming, stinking structure of the aetheric shield that overlaid the Robeast's control center, and sought for the one weak spot that would allow her to break it. It was tiny, and moving fast, but there it was. “Get ready, guys,” she said, readying the shining needle of the Spike of Hantis in her mind, “we'll only get one shot at this.”

With that, she thrust the Spike home. The shield shattered, eliciting a hollow yelp from their captive and an answering grunt of pain from Pidge. She paused a moment to catch her breath, feeling the others acting in tandem. Allura hit it first, thrusting her will into the seething morass of the monster's power core and pulling out great crackling streams of Quintessence, stripping the dark stain from the powerload and dispersing it in an explosive sneeze. Pidge's headache vanished and her blood sang when that energy was fed into her and the others, and then they got down to business. There was something like a computer system controlling the creature, although Pidge had never seen its like before. Half-circuitry, half aetheric construct, and a little like the major internal organs in a large animal, assuming that any beast could manage thirteen or so separate brains. Growling, Pidge plunged her will into these control units, forcing them into quiescence. She could feel Hunk doing the same thing to the major moving parts of the Robeast's body, locking up its joints, loosening up the major support elements, and deactivating both voice and forceblade. She felt the creature go limp beneath them, but neither she nor Keith relaxed their grip. Keith's turn came next, and she breathed in a long sigh of satisfaction at the golden-scarlet flames that burned away the amaranth-black web of the hexes that bound Shiro's essence into this shell. It was there, she could see it, that pure, deep blue-violet light, glinting with streamers of gold, that was the very soul of one of her dearest friends. It came loose from its moorings as the hexes shriveled and sputtered out and might have blown away, but Lance caught it in a field of sapphire, gently separating every last bit of it from the failing carcass that had been its prison and moving it... moving it where?

Pidge's vision had blurred from the effort of her labors, and she shook her head to clear it. Standing atop a hill of rubble not too far away was a figure that burned gold in her mind, holding up something that looked like a glass canister, about the size of a large coffee can. A can for very strange coffee, she thought, for it rippled with pale forces as Lance funneled every last drop of Shiro's Quintessence into it. For some absurd reason, the image of one of her father's favorite mugs surfaced in her memory, the one with the caption printed on it that read _Coffee is the Stuff of Life_ in large block letters, with the subscript beneath that warned: _so pour me some before I start the Zombie Apocalypse, already._ Pidge started giggling, the sort of exhausted humor that was just this side of tears. Thankfully, she was jolted out of them by the sudden collapse of the Robeast's body beneath them before she could start bawling; stripped of its energy and deprived of the forces holding it together, the running lights flickered out and the body fell to pieces.

“L... Lizenne?” Lance rasped in a voice raw from effort. “Did we do it? D'you have him?”

The witch's voice replied promptly over the comms, sounding shaken. _“The canister's full of Quintessence and it certainly feels like Shiro. You do realize that what you've just done has been proven to be impossible?”_

Hunk chortled wearily. “I believe in seven impossible things before breakfast!” He proclaimed. “It's on my itinerary every morning, right next to 'be awesome'. Oh, _quiznek,_ I'm pooped. Disengage, guys, I'm too tired to be a leg.”

“We did it,” Allura sighed, allowing the Lions their release. “Keith, we did it. We saved him.”

“Yeah,” Keith said in a shaking voice. “We did.”

 

There was silence on the command deck of the Courier ship. Not the simple silence of nothing much happening, but the thin, crowded, humming silence just before a major explosion. Haggar was staring aghast at the screens at the ruins of a Robeast, the five brightly-colored hulks of the Lions at rest, and specifically at the six tiny figures on a hill, one of which was holding a rank impossibility. Pendrash and his men had gone very still and quiet, instinctively aware that any move or sound on their part might result in a bloodbath. There were stories about the Emperor's rare, violent rages, and they really did not want to trigger one right now. His Imperial Majesty was certainly primed for it, eyes blazing with cold fury, breath hissing between his fangs, hands clenching and unclenching as though they itched to tear someone's guts out barehanded. There was a hiss of a different sort, one that made General Pendrash flinch; the two small Quintessence canisters on his sovereign's shoulder armor had emptied, and one gauntleted hand rose slowly to grip Haggar's shoulder.

“You will give me your power,” he growled in a voice that promised doom and destruction if he was not obeyed instantly, “I wish to retrieve what is mine.”

She jerked away in surprise, or tried to; Zarkon's grip was like iron. “My Lord, I--”

“Your power. Now.”

His demand was not loud, nor did it betray so much as a hint of threat. It was, however, as implacable as a polar storm, and possessed the awesome inevitability of a falling comet. There was no disobeying that tone, and Haggar rested her hand on his arm. Amethyst energy crackled around it, and she sagged, but he did not release her.

“All of it,” he said in that same dire voice, “I will not be denied this time.”

Haggar hissed. “My Lord, it's too much! I will not be able to--”

“All of it.”

She looked up into the twin pale gleams of his eyes, the only element of his features visible through his armor, and knew that he would not be denied. Amaranthine light poured into him, and when he released her, she slumped bonelessly to the floor. Nobody moved until the Emperor had left the command deck. Pendrash keyed the ship's comm and said quietly, “All hands, all hands, hear this: the Emperor is exiting the ship to get some exercise. Do not interfere, do not ask questions, and keep your distance. That is all.”

Subaltern Kerraz, who had gone to check on Haggar's vital signs, glanced up at him in surprise. “You're not sending an escort with him?”

Pendrash shook his head, frowning at the screens as a small one-person shuttle popped out of the bay and headed down to the smudged-looking spot on the planet. “No. I was present the last time he lost his temper like this. It would be a completely unnecessary gesture, and a sad waste of men. As it is, there may not be enough of that city left to rebuild.”

Kerraz lifted Haggar into his arms with great care, finding her to be curiously heavy for her slim build. “There isn't enough now, sir.”

Pendrash gave him a thin smile. “Last time, they had to use the rubble as fill. Picture a hole the size of a city, about eighty meters deep. And that was with the fill.”

Kerraz gulped, suddenly very glad that they were in orbit instead of on-planet. “Will you call in reinforcements, sir?”

“Not until he's finished,” Pendrash sighed. “We must not show any sign that we doubt his strength. Not when he's in this sort of a mood. The Paladins will be weary from fighting Haggar's monster, and if we imply that we feel that he cannot take on five worn-out warriors...”

Kerraz nodded. “Noted, sir. Her Ladyship here is exhausted. Should I take her to the medical section?”

“Take her to her quarters,” Pendrash said, raising a warning hand. “She will not permit herself to be examined by anyone other than her own Druids, and I like our medics too much to have to scrape their ashes up off of the floor. Just lay her out on her bunk and leave. Do not, if you value your life, be tempted to examine anything that you might see in there. I'd rather not have to scrape your ashes up off of the floor, either.”

“Yes sir,” Kerraz said, and hurried to follow orders.

 

“That's him?” Lance squinted tiredly at the canister, which was three-quarters full of golden fluid that shimmered with flickers of dark blue radiance when held up to the sunlight. “Did I get all of him? I didn't spill any, did I?”

Lizenne smiled and patted his cheek reassuringly. “Not a drop. I'll want to run a few scans when we get back to the ships, but this does seem to be the man himself. He has a big soul, doesn't he?”

Hunk rubbed at his eyes, trying not to think about lemonade. “Yeah. Always did. Pidge, Keith, you okay?”

His two teammates had given it their all today, and were slumping wearily together against the hull of Lizenne's lander. Keith grunted, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve a persistent headache. He hadn't cooked his under-armor this time, thanks to Allura feeding him power and Lance's fallout keeping him cool, but the effort of controlling the purifying force had worn him out. Climbing the hill had been more of an effort than he cared to admit. “I've been better. Pidge?”

Pidge shook her head. “I'll be okay. What worries me is what we're going to do next. We can't leave him in that bucket forever.”

Allura nodded. “You're right. I wonder if... what is that?”

The Altean's sharp eyes had spotted an approaching fireball dropping from the sky some miles away, and a few seconds later, the fires of reentry cleared enough to reveal the shape of a Galra scout shuttle. “Company,” Keith said in a tense voice.

There was a visceral snarl from behind that startled them all, and they turned to stare at the bone spear in astonishment. There was a pearly glow rippling up and down the shaft, and the tambok-fang spearhead flickered with pale fire. Lizenne hissed. “Zarkon. That's Zarkon in that lander. The spear wouldn't react like that for anyone else, other than Haggar. We have to leave, now! You don't have the strength to fight him!”

Allura lunged forward, grabbing Lizenne by the shoulders and shoving her toward the cockpit. “I do. Get out of here, then. Take Shiro to safety. The rest of you, go with her. I'll hold him off.”

“Wait, what?” Keith protested. “All alone?”

Allura's eyes burned with determination, and she raised her bayard defiantly. “He killed my father, and he wants the black Lion. He won't follow you if there's a chance to take me. I had the easiest job in taking down that Robeast, and I still have strength. My Lion will help me fight.”

Lizenne reached out and plucked the weapon from her hand. “Not with this, you won't. He'll take it from you and force the Lion to reduce you to a greasy smear on the stones. Take that instead--” she nodded at the shimmering spear, “--you have the right to use it, and it has powers that the Lions don't. Besides, it'll want a taste of him, and it will preserve you in order to get it, which your bayard will not.”

Lance didn't like this idea either. “Lizenne, we can't just--”

“You can,” Allura said, taking up the bone spear and feeling it humming eagerly in her hands. “Now, go.”

Lizenne gave her, and the spear, a narrow, considering look. “Yes we can, Lance,” she said, ignoring his horrified expression, “but hear me, girl. The moment, the very moment that you have an opening, you will leap into your Lion and come away, and you will not leave the spear behind.”

There was a distant _boom_ overhead; the Emperor had grown impatient with a normal descent, and had popped the canopy for a faster exit. The shuttle augured in, powerless, some distance away, and hit the ground with an impact that made the ground jerk underfoot like a live thing.

“No more time,” Allura snapped, “Go!”

They needed no more encouragement than that, and lifted off a few seconds later. Alone upon the stones of a crushed and ruined city, Allura stood in readiness and did not flinch when the armored figure landed nearby on a slab of masonry, cracking it. She was willing to admit that he made an awesome figure in his new suit of armor, but she felt that she had already faced the worst today; the spear was warm in her hand, even through her armor, and gave her courage. She needed it—she could feel the sheer power radiating off of him, and her inner eye revealed him as a dark shape cloaked in raiment woven of volcanic storms, oblivion and destruction personified. Somewhere in the back of her mind, something that did not feel like her Lion laughed, and reminded her slyly that volcanic ash made for rich soil, in time. His voice, however, might have wilted a thousand-year stonebark tree.

“Princess Allura,” the Emperor said in a quiet, even tone violently at odds with his ominous appearance, “you will give me my bayard, and my Lion.”

“No,” she replied simply, in a tone as quiet and even as his.

The pale eyes narrowed. “I had expected no less of you. You share your father's suicidal bravado, and his fatal lack of sound judgment.”

Allura's hand clenched around the spearshaft and glared right back. “And you have been poisoned by your own pride and avarice.” She sneered at him. “You had no right to do what you have done, past or present. Your entire life has been spent on finding new ways to abuse your power. How dare you? How dare you betray your people, your fellow Paladins, your whole Empire, in order to satisfy your own selfish desires?”

Zarkon growled like an earthquake and drew a long sword from a scabbard at his hip. “They are mine. I will do as I please with what is mine, and I will not tolerate theft. If you will not return what is mine, then you will die, and I will take my property from your charred and crumbling bones.”

“The Lion will not have you,” Allura said, bringing the spear up defensively.

“The Lion will not have a choice,” Zarkon replied, raising his sword. “It is mine as well, and knows its master.”

“He does,” Allura said fiercely, “and it is not you.”

Zarkon looked up at the great impassive hulk of the black Lion, and Allura felt a flare of dark power. A year ago, six months ago, perhaps less than that, the Lion would have responded. Instead, the Lion's shield snapped into being, denying Zarkon entry.

“You cannot force him,” Allura said, very softly.

Zarkon let out a snarl of wrath and attacked. Allura responded instantly, blocking his blade with the shaft of the spear; there was a _crack_ of impact and a shower of sparks that surprised them both—first, that the spear had held, and second, that Allura had barely felt the blow. For the first time, Zarkon really _looked_ at the weapon she bore, and Allura saw his eyes widen, and then narrow again, and then she had no time to take in anything else. Weapons training was traditional for Altean children above a certain rank, and while she preferred the versatility of a whip, her mother had disapproved of so common a weapon (and one so inappropriate for a proper Lady), and had insisted that she learn the staff as well. Allura made the most of that training now, and then some. Allura might have had her pick of the very best that the royal weaponsmiths had to offer, but she had never before laid hands on such a weapon as this. It danced on the air as lightly as a spirit, and yet it turned Zarkon's sword aside with ease, and she could swear that if she let it go, it would continue the fight all by itself. He was a skilled opponent, deeply experienced and deadly, but it was becoming more and more obvious that he had not faced a real challenge in a very long time, and was starting to become impatient. He didn't start losing his temper until she slipped the butt of the spear past his guard and rammed it into his faceplate, knocking his head back. He managed to evade the following jab with the sharp end, but it was a near thing.

They both paused, lungs heaving for breath, and he gave her a fulminating glare of bottomless hatred that was nearly a weapon in and of itself. He growled, low and deadly, and his armor began to seethe with amaranthine energy; Allura caught the stink of it, and was ready for it when it crackled down his sword arm and hurled itself at her, a burst of power that would have blown an ordinary warrior's flesh from his bones. She swung the spear, and the blade, blazing with fires of its own, sliced the bolt in two with an actinic flash that nearly blinded her. For a moment, the air around her was full of loose aetheric energy, severed from its controls. It might have cooked any other person alive, but Allura was a Perfect Mirror, and drew it in instead. Her body and mind humming with this sudden infusion of power, she channeled the greater portion of it into the spear. It screamed—not in pain, but in triumph, and she could barely keep up as it leaped for Zarkon's throat.

He tried again, channeling more energy through his own sword, only to find himself facing an equal, and again, as if unable to believe that his methods weren't working. She was too agile for brute strength, immune to the aetheric power he carried, and every time he struck at her, she was the one who grew stronger. Indeed, she began to pull that power from him, taking more every time their blades met, stripping it clean of his and Haggar's taint and channeling it into the spear. She saw herself glowing now, with the hard bright rose color of strawberry quartz. Zarkon burned also, and with deadly rage; it infuriated him that any mortal person could face him and not die, and it wasn't long before Allura saw him starting to lose control. She grinned at him, teeth bared in a predator smile, and he answered her mockery with a scream of black wrath that was not all that different from the Robeast's. He raised his sword, double-handed, for a slash... just a little bit too high. Allura lunged, and it was the spearhead that penetrated his guard this time, jabbing through the armor of his left thigh with hardly any resistance at all.

Zarkon let out a screech of shock and agony and jerked away, dark blood bursting from the gash in his armor, and he stumbled, the leg trying to collapse beneath him. _Hamstrung,_ she thought, _or nearly._ Allura pressed her advantage, slashing at him, forcing him backwards on the uneven ground; a loose stone under the left foot was his undoing, and his leg buckled when he tried to block another jab. In a way, it saved him. Allura had aimed for his heart, but his sideways lurch sent the spear into the right shoulder instead. Arm suddenly useless, Zarkon's sword clattered to the ground, and he stared at her in astonished disbelief. She might have ended him then and there—the spear was certainly willing to finish the job—but Coran's voice through her helmet-comm broke her concentration.

“ _Princess! Princess, can you hear me? Allura, you must get out of there! Hurry! All of local space is filling up with warships, and we can't fight that many!”_

Allura looked up, and saw dark shapes starting to appear in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. “Next time,” she promised the gasping Emperor, and turned and ran for her Lion. The shield popped like a soap bubble to admit her, and she and the Lion were up and away a few seconds later, leaving Zarkon howling in pain and fury in the dust behind them.

 

She was met back aboard the Castle by the dragons, who snuffled her gently and grunted at the residual rosy glow that surrounded her. She was too tired to care, and the blood-smeared spear was more valuable to her as a prop than anything else at the moment. Tilla twittered delicately at her and offered a leg up, and it was with deep gratitude that Allura accepted the ride. Even if it did make her feel like a barbarian warrior-queen, mounted upon a dread steed with sorcerous weapon in hand. Having to duck her head under the lintels of the doors they passed through on the way to the lifts helped with that a little. Real warrior-queens would have designed their halls and doorways with dread steeds in mind, after all, and Allura was too worn out to start thinking about renovating the Castle right now.

Tilla carried her with vast dignity into the bridge with Soluk in escort, and a glance at the screens told her that Zaianne had already removed them from the embattled planet. Allura did feel a pang of guilt for leaving without helping the locals with the wreckage, but was willing to concede that they'd had no choice but to leave. Tilla dipped a shoulder and extended the leg, allowing her to descend with reasonable grace into the arms of her team, all of whom were clamoring their admiration of her. More importantly, Hunk had wrapped his arms around her in a huge bear hug, and that comfort was exactly what she needed.

“That was _great,”_ she heard Lance gushing, “I mean—wow! He swung at you, and you went _bam-whack-pow,_ and _zap_ all over the place and-and-and- _kicked_ his Imperial butt!”

The others had more to offer, all of it in the same vein, and she was too tired, and especially too thirsty to appreciate any of it. The best reply that she was able to manage was a sort of moofling noise, and that was mostly lost in Hunk's vest.

“Yeah, just give that here... thanks,” Hunk said, and Allura felt him reach for something. “Back off a little, guys. Here you go, Allura.”

She lifted her eyes to the incredibly welcome sight of a tall glass of her favorite fruit juice, complete with straw, and she wasted no time in getting that much-needed moisture into her system. “Thank you,” she gasped once she'd drained the glass. “Are we well away?”

“Out, gone, and away, and all in triple time.” That was Nasty, sounding disgustingly cheerful. “Not the most exciting of getaways I've ever had, but one of the best-attended. There were so many of those warships crowding in that they were all getting in each other's way—none of them could shoot at us without blowing up two or three of their own guys first! Hah! Typical Galra panic. Take out the leader, and the troops go all to pieces. Nice fight, by the way. Very heroic.”

“We're currently in the outer orbits of the Tuppelwipp system,” Coran supplied, “hiding in one of the outer asteroid belts. Zaianne and I agreed that it would be a nice quiet spot to catch our breath in.”

“Good.” Allura handed the empty glass to Lance and pulled off her helmet, spotting Lizenne standing off to one side, gazing pensively at the stars. “Lizenne, you may take the spear back now.”

The witch nodded, accepting the still-humming length of bone and ivory. “Very well done, young lady... ah. And is that the blood of the tyrant I see upon the blade?”

Allura glanced up at the dark stain on the spearhead. “I didn't have time to clean it.”

Lizenne borrowed a length of sterile gauze from the first-aid kit that Zaianne had stashed near the defense-drone station to wipe the blade, and then carefully sealed it into a sample bottle from the same kit. “Research material. Who knows what this might tell us about him?”

“I am past caring at this time,” Allura replied wearily, leaning on Soluk's foreleg. “What will we do about Shiro?”

Lizenne leaned on her spear with a worried frown. “Whatever we choose to do, it will not be simple, nor will it be easy. Your amazing efforts have gained us what might arguably be the most important portion of the man, but it is not good for either him or us to keep him in a bucket. He needs a body, and the sooner, the better.”

“Um,” Hunk said thoughtfully, “well, you've got that mad-science lab. Can you make him up a new one in there?”

She sighed. “Theoretically, but we have a problem with that, and one that we've run into before this. I do not have so much as a hair from his head, Hunk. He kept his quarters scrupulously clean, and laundered that old slave-smock of his at least twice before ever I laid eyes on it. I can't grow him a new body without something to start with, and there isn't so much as a single skin cell of his in the Castle.”

Keith nodded. “Yeah, he was worried about alien pathogens and diseases, so he set the cleaning system to max. Even the black Lion got flushed regularly.”

Zaianne made a gesture of approval. “Sensible of him. I can think of a number of major plagues that could have been averted by such care in the recent past. The colony world of Valenth, most recently, where an outbreak of gharoc plague wiped out an entire city.”

“Sensible, but inconvenient,” Lizenne continued. “I could, possibly, construct a reasonable facsimile of his body from samples donated by Pidge, Lance, and Hunk--”

“Why not mine?” Keith asked.

“You're half-Galra,” Lizenne said, and smiled thoughtfully. “While he might look devastatingly handsome with a coat of purple fur, boy, I don't think that he'd appreciate it. In any case, such an attempt may well fail.”

“Why's that?” Pidge asked.

“None of you are him,” Lizenne stated simply. “As Modhri would be able to tell you from personal experience, a person's Quintessence will not willingly inhabit a body that is not its natural integument, and even cloned parts can be difficult to get used to. We would have only a fifty-fifty chance of success with a composite corpus, and we don't get another try if we fail.”

“Not that, then,” Hunk said. “How 'bout a robot body, then? I've had this idea...”

“No.” Lizenne shot him a hard look that shut him up. “He's already had one. Do you really want to ruin your heroic record by building Robeasts, Hunk? It's one thing to engender life in a mechanical system, but quite another to bind a stolen soul into a robot chassis.”

Hunk flinched at the very thought. “Eew, no. Scratch that, then.”

“Good boy. What we _can_ do is use the half we have to find out if the other half still exists.” Lizenne's face wrinkled in distaste. “Haggar keeps samples from her more interesting subjects for study, often for years, and you must admit that Shiro is a real prize in that manner. Even if it's just a few slides in a lab somewhere, it will be enough.”

“And she'll probably have dropped the shields on them, since it's just the body!” Pidge said, eyes sparkling with eagerness. “How 'bout we all go--”

Lizenne tapped her sharply on the head with one finger. “To bathe, to eat, and to sleep. You are all worn out from today's battle, and Allura is out on her feet! Don't look at me like that, we will have the time. Allura did a fair amount of damage to Zarkon back there, damage that even a first-rate healpod will have difficulty mending. Even Haggar will need time to restore the full function of his limbs to him, for the bone spear bit deep, and it will have left an influence in those wounds that will seek to destroy him from the inside out.”

Keith grinned. “Sort of like that rake that Haggar gave Shiro, right?”

“Very much the same, only from the other side of the scale.” Lizenne smirked. “And she only got in a scratch. Oh, my, yes, we'll have time ere they move again, or can even be safely moved off of that world. “Very, very well done, all of you. Now go and refresh yourselves while you have the time. I will expect to see all of you on the training deck tomorrow morning, bright and sharp as the blade that brought an Emperor to his knees.”

“Yes, Ma'am!” the Paladins chorused, and trundled out of the room.

Nasty chortled. “Ever think of going into motivational speech as a career move, lady?”

“No,” Lizenne replied, turning the spear thoughtfully in one hand and checking the tambok fang for nicks. “That's just normal female assertiveness. There was a reason that Galran society was once centered around Queens, you know.”

“I don't,” Nasty replied, giving her a quizzical look. “Galra don't share their early history with outsiders much. Queens, huh? What the _kletch_ happened to change that?”

Zaianne smiled. “Shall I tell you a bedtime story, Celenast? I'm named for one of the major characters.”

His normally sly smile turned wondering. “Really? I haven't heard a proper bedtime story since my Granny got into my brother's stash of bootleg fessel wine, and got drunk enough to spin tales of her own misspent youth. Does it have romance? Espionage? Huge space battles? Political intrigue? Oooh, how about evil stepmothers and big toothy monsters?”

Coran grinned at him. “All of the above. You should have heard Zarkon going on about some of the things that his own family used to get up to, back when he was still young, bright-eyed, and not a planet-ripping madman. Why, if you poured enough horath into him, you could almost see his tiny little nub of a vestigial sense of humor. Then he passed out, most times.”

Lizenne chuckled at Nasty's disbelieving expression. “Great days, oh, yes. Never forget that even tyrants start small.”

“It all started well before that,” Zaianne said, “back when there was no Empire, just a lot of Queen-ruled Domains on Galran Prime and a handful of offworld colonies. It begins on the Homeworld, in fact, when the Queen Mother Lomaris had finally condescended to breathe her last, leaving the Banabuk Throne to her twin daughters Tolari and Sehaila...”

 

Lizenne listened for a little time, admiring her adoptive sister's talent for storytelling, and then lifted the spear. It was warm to the touch, and her inner ear heard it singing a low song of sanguinary triumph. “Had fun, did you?” she murmured as she made her way back to her own ship, “and found Allura's hand to your liking? I'll bet you did. She's a classic straight out of the old tales.”

The spear laughed, a low hissing sound that brought to mind high winds rushing over sharp edges.

“And you're another,” she said softly, “as are we all. I know that you have your own ways of tweaking the future into a shape that benefits your chances, O Spear. Kindly keep in mind that I've become fond of my odd little pack, and would like to see them survive this. Some few of us have eluded your Master most entertainingly already, and we're set on slipping another out of His reach. The better to confound your own prey, you know.”

There was a faint ringing sound from the spear, like steel on steel. Not as in battle, but as in a forge, where a greater blade was being made.

“Is that so?” Lizenne said, and traversed the connecting tube between ships in thoughtful silence. This continued until she reached the _Chimera's_ small training deck, where she laid the spear down on its own special stand. “It's been a long time, and I do not doubt that Kuphorosk is eager to greet our enemies face-to-face. From the tales I have read, I may also note that the God is incurably addicted to high drama. Will our legend last ten thousand years, I wonder?”

The spear laughed again, as merrily as war-banners flapping in the wind, which was as good an answer as she was going to get. She shook her head, reflected upon the possibilities of the following days, and left to set up a certain vital selection of machinery in the lab... just in case.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liked it? Hated it? Want to trade recipes for Shiro Soup? Let us know!


	9. Reconnaissance and Invasion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is late! It would have been up a couple days ago, but I kept forgetting to give it the final proof read, and then yesterday I came home from a workplace where the sewage pipes in the basement had gotten clogged and the whole place smelled of Regret. All I wanted then was a shower, the smuttiest Kidge I could find (which isn't much, there really aren't enough of those) and my bed. So again, my apologies for the lateness of this chapter, but it's here now, and I hope you enjoy the newest installment in our adventure!

Chapter 9: Reconnaissance and Invasion

 

_That's not good, guys,_ Hunk said, circling the containment unit. It looked different here in the Mindscape, taller than a man and looking like a roll of chainlink fencing would, if lightning could be woven like wire. Shiro was visible within that coil, sitting with his knees drawn up, his arms crossed atop them, and his head resting on his wrists. He was battered, bruised, torn, and exhausted, and his mechanical arm looked as though it had come in second in a demolition derby.  _That's really not good. Are you sure that there's nothing that we can do for him?_

_Not right now,_ Lizenne said, running a hand over the pale field of energies that contained their friend.  _The health of a soul relies on the material form to nourish it, and he can't begin to heal unless he's reunited with his body. He's at rest for the moment, which is a mercy. Frankly, I'm surprised that he hasn't fragmented; Haggar certainly tried her best. Modhri was in far worse shape than this when I pulled him out of the charnel bin._

_Small mercies,_ Allura said, looking around at her team.  _All right, we need to find the rest of him. Can we do it in the same fashion we did last time?_

_Of course, although there are risks,_ Lizenne replied.  _You told me earlier that when you made contact that first time, you experienced his suffering firsthand._

_Just a little,_ Lance said in a sick voice.  _Just a few seconds of it. It was more than enough._

_I think... I think we saw him being turned into a Robeast,_ Keith said with a shudder.  _Yeah, that's right. He saw Haggar cast the spell, and it hurt. A lot._

_ I shouldn't have run away when he showed up in my dream, _ Pidge mourned,  _ I could have helped him then, couldn't I? _

_ Maybe, and maybe not. It's entirely possible that both of you would have ended up dead. Too late now.  _ Lizenne sighed.  _ There is no turning back time. It was probably for the best. Losing Shiro was bad enough, for all that we were able to find a replacement for him. We don't have anyone else of your caliber handy, girl, and you came entirely too close to joining the Druids as it was. _

Keith shifted uncomfortably.  _ So, how are we going to do this? _

_With a very great deal of care. Haggar's probably on edge right now, and will want to make herself and her Lord, to say nothing of her lair, as safe as possible while he recovers. I do not doubt that they're on watch for us, and that they've got a whole pack of Druids standing guard. You evaded her safeguards last time by going in on his soul-link to the black Lion, which no amount of shielding seems to be able to block entirely. You will do this again, although you will follow the link to his body instead._

Hunk raised a worried hand.  _ Yeah, but if they're on watch for us, how are we going to do this without them going ape? I don't know about you, but I really don't want to have to deal with those things again. Not on this side. _

Lizenne's teeth flashed in a quick grin.  _ Good question. It is high time that I taught you how to conceal your aura, and to protect yourselves from harm. The latter is actually the easy part. Think of your armor, Paladins, and picture yourselves wearing it. Feel its weight, how every joint coordinates with your own, the colors, the view through the visors, everything. Know that it will support and protect you, for those suits are in truth a small part of the Lions themselves. Bring your bayards along as well; you never know. _

It was the easiest thing in the world. All of them had spent enough time wearing their armor for it to become a sort of second skin, and when five hands curled fingers at their hips, they felt the weight and solidity of their bayards take shape against their palms. They glowed against the star-washed twilight of the mindscape like torches, however, and that was not going to go unnoticed by anyone.  _ Kind of shiny here, guys,  _ Lance observed.  _ How do we damp this down a little? _

_ Concentrate on your shadows, _ Lizenne told them,  _ they are a part of the cosmos, existing as a portion of empty space that swallows up the light. In order to be visible, a thing must reflect light. Let your personal patch of tame darkness envelop you, and swallow up every photon that seeks to find you out. Repeat after me:  _ Tham ketha Vashi'tok, seida lom keloni vaath, pelaro mikti'karolan—hepailah! H'yah-vei!

Short that cantrip might have been, but it worked. As they spoke the alien syllables, the darkness beneath their feet slipped upward and over their armor like silk, like ink dripped into water, like black ice over a roadbed, and they faded into shadow so completely that even they had difficulty perceiving each other.

_ Cool!  _ Hunk said, striking a pose.  _ Check it out, guys—I am the Night. _

_ We all are,  _ Allura giggled, admiring the star-flecked firmament of her breastplate.  _ What exactly do those words mean, by the way? _

_ Very loosely translated from the Ancient Subarctic TokMok-Galrai, it goes:  _ 'Arise, beloved reflection of Spirit, I have need of your perfect concealment—behold joyously! We are one!' Lizenne said fondly, her eyes distant.  _ It was once believed that one's shadow was madly in love with one's physical self, for it remains faithful to a person until the body has crumbled to dust. To say, 'I love him more than his shadow does', or even 'I am my mate's shadow', are still endearments of the highest order, although one shouldn't voice them in public. Or even in private, unless one intends to have cubs within the year. _

Keith cocked her a puzzled glance.  _ You can do magic with love poems? _

Lizenne's peal of rich laughter echoed off of the stars.  _ It depends upon what you would term 'magic'. In truth, any old words will do, although ancient languages do pack a punch, if only because they often possess concepts and terminologies that more modern tongues lack. It's the will and the focus that are the important part, and words serve to direct those. In any case, love is one of the most important motivators for any thinking being. The bonds that hold you and your Lions together are based upon it. For love of your friends you have done the impossible, for love of your fellow sentient peoples you defy a tyrant, and now, for the love that you hold for this man, you are willing to risk your lives and sanity once again. See him, see the bonds you share with him, and find the one line that that does not connect to you or to the Lion. _

They turned to face the containment unit, and concentrated. This exercise took a little more thought, but before long they became aware of the subtle ties that held them to their Lions and to each other; lines of prismatic fire in five bold colors linking them all heart-to-heart. Shiro's still form glowed a rich tanzanite purple, although dimly, and Keith could not help but notice something odd.

_Some of his bonds are stronger than others,_ he observed,  _and all of ours are stronger than his._

_You've had a solid year to get to know each other,_ Lizenne replied with a shrug that was barely more than a ripple in the air.  _From what I can make out, very little 'real' time—time that matters on the physical plane—has passed for him, and not all that much of that was spent in your vicinity. The bonds he shares with you and Pidge, and the Lion are the strongest, simply because he knows you the best... and because the Lion has dropped a rather impressive anchor into him. Hedging its bet, is my guess. Where is the one that does not involve you?_

They looked carefully at every thread that emerged from the containment unit, but it wasn't until Pidge crossed her eyes and squinted at one edge of a passing nebula that they found it. _Here!_ She said, grabbing that one narrow strand of spirit-silk, _I've found it, it's really faint, but I've got it! And it feels... it feels weird. Check it out, guys._

The others joined her, taking hold of the thread and standing silent for a time, absorbing what information they could from it. _What can you tell me?_ Lizenne asked. _Is there anything on the other end?_

_Yes,_ Allura replied, tugging thoughtfully on the line. _There is some considerable weight there, but... but it feels wrong somehow. Haggar may have done something to his body, but I cannot say what._

_I don't like it,_ Lance said. _I_ really _don't like it. It's cold, and there's something like poison, and... and something empty?_

_Not just empty,_ Hunk said uneasily, _something squeezed or scraped out, and there's only the shell left, and... wow. I haven't seen wreckage like that since I had to clean up after the steamed lobsters I made Mom for her birthday dinner. The shells were still good and they made a great seafood stock--_

_Nobody is going to make soup out of Shiro!_ Pidge snarled. _How do we get him back?_

_Follow the trail. Keith, Pidge, you've got the strongest connection, so do us the honor of taking point in this hunt. I'll take rearguard while the rest of you hold the center, and watch out for danger._ Lizenne took up a position behind them. _We have the scent. Let us make use of it._

With a growl of defiance, Keith broke into a run, the rest of the group hot on his heels.

It was not so long a journey as the last time that they had done this, and urgency lent them speed; indeed, they seemed to fly rather than run. The trace had become a path, narrow and faint though it was, and Keith followed it with burning intensity, refusing to stop or even to slow down until the sight of their destination gave him pause.

_Parzurak,_ he breathed,  _he's being held in the Center._

_And it's guarded,_ Allura said grimly.  _Look at all of that!_

The vast, dark hulk of the Empire's seat of government was an edifice of shadow, outlined by strips of purple flame. There were fields of amaranthine energies wound around it, and miles-long strings of strange symbols, each heiroglyph as large as a Lion wound about the jagged peaks of it, and the smaller glints of fighting craft and warships swarmed about it like shoals of fish. Humming all through the very substance of the station itself was the black-ice cacophany of the same aetheric shields as the Robeasts had carried, and the jangling roar of it set their teeth on edge. That wasn't all, however.

_Druids,_ Lance said, pointing up at the ragged shadows that patrolled the Center, orbiting the upper middle section like sharks around a desert island.  _Lots of them. Wow. The place wasn't this heavily guarded last time!_

_Haggar wasn't aware that you had aetheric talent last time,_ Lizenne said absently, studying the dread construct before them,  _you've certainly got her worried, and that's just about Pidge and Allura. She has no idea of what the rest of you are capable of, so she's taking no chances. Damn. She's been recruiting; there are far more Druids flapping about than she had before._

_Yeah. Looks like ten, maybe fifteen or so,_ Hunk said nervously.  _I don't think that we're getting in there today, guys._

_Then we won't try,_ Lizenne said.

_But--_ Keith and Pidge protested in unison.

Lizenne emitted a pulse of negation that all of them felt.  _No. Even with Voltron helping, we can't crack this. Force is not the answer, so we will use wits instead. We have found where he is being kept. Since I hardly think that Shiro's corpus would wind up in the kitchen freezers—against food safety regulations, that—it will be packed away in the science deck. That's where most of the Druids are circling at the moment, in any case. I actually visited her private lab once, and know where her cold storage lockers are. Allura, what can you tell me about the stars? You're an expert astrogator. Where are we?_

Allura turned and studied the surrounding space, looking for handy constellations and other landmarks. The angle was odd and the glimmering golden threads of _Tahe Moq_ that connected them were distracting, but rescue came in the form of a particular feature in the galactic southwest; a slightly irregular spiral constellation, lent a faintly orange blush by the huge old red giant star that stood fourth in line from the outer end. Allura knew that particular formation very well, for the fifth in line was her own home star; Altea and its neighboring planets had orbited there once, the heart of her father's kingdom. The rest of the sky fell right into place once she had that first fixed in her mind, and was able to extrapolate from there. _Halemore System,_ she said firmly. _A galaxy or two from where we are now, but not impossibly far away._

Lizenne nodded slowly. _The Halemore System is home to the planet of Geroshan, which is one of the few places where things as big as the Center can resupply easily. Moving that behemoth around isn't a small enterprise, as you should well know! Pidge, what can you tell us about the aetheric defenses? I will not ask you to break the shield; that one happens to be the strongest that I've ever seen._

Pidge bent her discerning eye upon the miles-wide sheets and streamers of amethyst-and-garnet-colored energies. _Good, because there is no way that I can crack them without cracking my skull along with them. Although... although I think I might be able to poke a hole in them. Just a tiny one, if I've got someone feeding me power. Allura, do you think that you can do that? Siphon off power from the shields, clean it up some, and keep me fueled?_

Allura eyed the livid energies as well, and nodded slowly. _If I'm very careful, and if someone is willing to dump me in a hot bath afterward, yes. That energy is unclean, and I will very much wish to scrub myself inside and out! What did you have in mind?_

Pidge grinned evilly. _If I can poke a hole in that, just enough to mess with the security systems a little, we could break in there and steal Shiro's body without anyone catching on. Worth an hour or two in the tub any day, Allura._

Lance drew himself up to his full height and saluted. _I hereby volunteer to take the Princess to the baths after this mission, sir!_

_I don't doubt it,_ Lizenne replied with a chuckle. _Don't hit him, ladies, you may be grateful for his help later. Hunk, tell me about the physical defenses. As Nasty might say, a theft of any sort is no good to anyone if your approach is bad or your getaway isn't clean. We will be attempting to pick the biggest pocket in the universe._

Hunk studied the Center carefully, opening his unique perceptions, and then wincing at what he saw there. _Pretty tough,_ he said after a moment. _They've built in guns all over the place on the outside and there are tons of Sentries and things on the inside, and that's just the upper and lower decks. I can feel the science deck, and frankly, I wish that I couldn't. It feels crazy in there, bad crazy, and there are things moving around in there that aren't really machines. They're crazy, too, and everything stinks of Haggar. I can foul them up, or at least slow them down, but Lance? You get to help scrub my back, too._

_Cyborgs, at a guess. She tests them in the arena and keeps the best for her own purposes,_ Lizenne said with distaste. _Is Haggar anywhere on that station, Hunk?_

_Nope, and probably not Zarkon, either,_ Hunk replied. _Looks like you were right—they're still stuck in that ruined city for now._

Lizenne cast an appraising look at the circling Druids. _Good. Lance, Keith, your own talents for healing and purification will stand us in good stead if that monster has planted anything in Shiro's body; I refuse to put his Quintessence back in tainted flesh. If Pidge and Allura can make and hold open a door for us, and if Hunk can keep the security systems quiet, I see no reason why we can't skip in, steal the body, and then skip out again with no one the wiser. Does that sound like something that you can do?_

The hope in their eyes was all the answer she needed.

 

“Absolutely not,” Nasty said firmly, with a ferocious scowl and all four arms crossed over his chest. “You're about to loot a corpse—hells, the corpse _is_ the loot—right out from under the noses of two of the most dangerous people in the universe, and out from the most dangerous level of the most dangerous part of the most dangerous spot in the universe... and you're not inviting me along? You're getting better at locks, but you're still rank amateurs, and I can guarantee you that the ones over there aren't the sort available to the general public. You'll need a professional, and that's me. I'm coming, and that's that.”

“He's not dead. Plus, it gives you an opportunity to rifle through Haggar's underwear drawer, right?” Keith said acidly.

Nasty, on the other hand, flashed him an insulted look. “Don't be vulgar, Keith. I'd never be able to prove the provenance well enough to suit the collectors, and that old _cletha_ doesn't even have the decency to wear expensive jewelry. I'm sticking close to you guys. Heroes, right? You're honor-bound to make sure that I survive the trip.”

“Nasty...” Keith said warningly; impatience and the little Unilu's badgering were scraping his nerves raw.

“Actually, that's not a bad idea,” Zaianne observed from the pilot's dais, although she never took her eyes off of the screens. “Thace's last few reports revealed that Haggar's private labs were sealed off from the rest of the deck by locks of a sort that he'd never encountered before. How different they were, he never found out—too dangerous. I'd come along myself, but someone has to mind the ship.”

“Plus, I'm bored,” Nasty added, pouting as only an Unilu could pout. “All of these mouse-and-dragon chases are fun and you aren't skimping on that silverware set, but you've been hogging all of the adventures to yourselves.”

Lance leaned over with a sardonic smirk and poked Nasty's shoulder. “Okay, you get to fight the next few Robeasts. Hunk, we'll need lots of popcorn.”

Hunk gave him a thumbs-up. “On it!”

Allura giggled at Nasty's affronted expression and then turned back to Coran. “Has Pidge finished running the tests on our shuttle yet?”

“Not sure,” Coran replied, poking at his controls. “The last time I asked, she threatened to _elipvate_ my _ratesifrans_ if I bothered her again. Not quite sure what that means, but she said that it involved earth-moving equipment. I don't pester young ladies who threaten me with shovels.”

Nasty let out a long, impressed whistle. “Smart. It's something that the Urwilligs of Bropaval Secunda do to people who disturb the meditations of the Nuraup Grand Opmonkos. Basically, they take the poor idiot's center-left midsection grasper in one primary hand and garden trowels in two others, and an oven-fresh chexxle pie in the last two—and this is just for minor infractions, mind you—and then they--”

Fortunately, Pidge's entrance into the bridge forestalled what was going to be a nightmare-inducing lecture. “Nasty, you've got that mixed up with _ilitvapin_ someone's _blefretizens_ again,” Pidge said All I was going to do was knot his mustache around a post-hole digger.”

“That's quite bad enough!” Coran declared, to the amusement of the others. “Might I be allowed to inquire as to your progress without risking the structural integrity of my face now?”

“Sure,” Pidge said with an unrepentant grin. “The shuttle's rigged out and ready to go, and I wired in an extra power core in the back that'll give us a little more time being invisible. Are we in position yet?”

It had been agreed that taking the Lions in to do this job would be a bad idea; the sentinel fleet hanging around the Center was huge, and would attack immediately if they saw so much as a long-'scope image on the sensors. Instead, they were taking one of the Hatchcrackers still stowed in the Castle's docking bay. Those weren't terribly fast or long-range, but they were extremely solid, powerful, had plenty of cargo space, and were well-armored. Their ability to make their own doors was a definite plus. Combine that with one of Pidge's cloaking systems, and they had the ideal vehicle for their plans.

“Almost,” Zaianne said cautiously. “There are patrols everywhere, and in everything. We're just lucky that this System still has a half-decent asteroid belt to hide in. We've been listening in on their chatter, and it seems that the only place in the universe that is more heavily guarded is Teravan—the world where you fought the Shirobeast, and where Zarkon and Haggar are receiving treatment for their injuries.”

“I bet,” Hunk said, and then cocked an odd look at Keith's mother. “Wait, Haggar got hurt, too? When was this?”

“Before you and the others came up here,” Coran said with an approving glance in Allura's direction. “Chatty fellows, your basic Galra sergeants. It's rumored that before Zarkon came down to get himself trounced by the Princess, he forced Haggar into giving him all the power she had on hand, not that it did him any good, eh? Exhausted her so badly that she's barely able to move right now. I've been meaning to ask, Allura, how'd you counter that?”

Allura frowned at the screens, which were showing a long string of purple warships passing by at a safe distance. “Part of it was that he could not use his powers effectively against me. I am a Perfect Mirror, Coran, and that sort of assault simply does not work. By the end of that fight, I was pulling it out of him in chunks. My other advantage was the spear that Lizenne lent me, which I used to channel all of that power against him. That is... that is a very unusual weapon.”

Nasty shifted uneasily. “Damned straight, it is. Ronok wouldn't say much about his home most of the time, but if we could pour enough trimblat brandy into him before Doc could find out that we'd hidden some from him, he'd tell us a few of the epics he learned from his great-great-grandpa. If even half of what he said about bone spears was true, you'll want to be real careful with that thing, lady.”

“ _Believe me, we're taking all of the necessary precautions,”_ Modhri's voice came from a side screen. _“We've found a decent spot, Coran, there's a chunk of meteoric iron a few more_ selpars _along this band—about seven miles long with its own magnetic field. Looks like a dropped fruit rind, and there's enough room inside the folded section for both ships to hide in. It's well within the Hatchcracker's effective range, too.”_

“I see it, sir, and a very good spot it is, too.” Coran sighed wistfully and adjusted his controls. “Alfor and his team used to love handy bits of space junk like that, whether it was to hide behind them, use them for booby-traps, or as bait, or to drop them on the heads of the deserving. Actually got a thank-you letter for doing that once. Odd bunch, the Climp'P'Glorams. Lovely people, very fond of dancing, and they gobbled up nickel-iron like it was candy. Just don't let them step on your toes.”

“ _They're still around,”_ Modhri replied calmly, _“most of them make their living by handling the ferrous wreckage from their three neighboring solar systems, and are invaluable for clearing orbits of navigational hazards. I warn you, the current fashion trend for dance involves a great deal of stomping around in heavy boots. Their love of mass line dancing has triggered six major earthquakes in the past two years.”_

“I shall have to visit them sometime,” Coran declared cheerfully as he directed the Castle under the shadow of the asteroid.

It really did look like a fruit rind, possibly a banana peel or an orange rind that had been split apart in great ragged sections, and lurking in the deepest part of the hollow was the _Chimera Rising._ The Castle slipped into place next to it at an angle that wouldn't cause problems if they had to leave in a hurry, and came to rest so that the two ships could connect. Coran grunted in satisfaction at the neat job of parallel parking and turned to face the Paladins. “Time to armor up, I'd guess. Is Lizenne ready yet, Modhri?”

“ _She's already on her way over, armed, armored, and eager.”_ Modhri smiled fondly at them through the screen. _“She's hated Haggar ever since she was very young, and that little escapade she had with Pidge and Allura as a dragon didn't do quite enough damage to suit her. She's asked me to tell you to meet her by the Hatchcracker bay, Paladins. Good hunting.”_

 

Lizenne was a little surprised at the last-minute attachment of an Unilu pirate to the rescue team, but she was perfectly willing to have him along, and not for the reasons that had already been stated. “I should have thought of it myself,” she admitted, adjusting the long sheathed knife on her belt so that it wouldn't get in the way when she sat down in the Hatchcracker's copilot's seat. “The locks that we're likely to encounter over there will be of the very best quality. Nasty, I'll want you to study them very carefully, and to record everything. When you return to the Ghost Fleet, you will want to teach your fellow safecrackers all about them. My people do tend to hoard important things, and it would be better if those things were in Yantilee's hands, rather than in Zarkon's.”

“Or in ours,” Keith said, pulling himself up onto one of the troop benches. “Nothing in that place is more important than Shiro's body right now. Let's get going, Pidge.”

“Gotcha,” Pidge said, clambering up into the pilot's seat.

She'd had to make some considerable adjustments to that piece of furniture; the Grezzani who had designed and built the Hatchcrackers had been very tall indeed, and just getting up into the seats required some effort. Even Lizenne, who was taller than the average Human male, looked like a little girl sitting in an adult's chair. Pidge managed it with with some grace, and glanced back at the rear of the boarding craft, where the secondary power source hummed quietly to itself. It was a massive, blocky thing that she'd salvaged from the Castle's shuttle parts warehouse, and had justified its use by the simple fact that the Castle no longer had the right kind of shuttle to install it into, nor would it ever again. Pidge had the feeling that after Allura, Coran, and the mice had been safely stashed in their cryopods and King Alfor had gone off to meet his end at Zarkon's hands, there had been a general exodus of every other inhabitant. She felt a pang of sympathy for the ship; it was always a terrible thing to be abandoned by everyone you knew.

Pidge shifted her gaze to her teammates; Hunk, Lance, Allura, Nasty, and Keith had managed to haul themselves into their seats and Lizenne had parked her spear in one of the weapons brackets on one wall. “Seat belts, guys,” she said, and activated the drive.

In response, the Castle's bay doors slid smoothly open, allowing her to pilot their craft cautiously out into open space; it felt strange to her to be flying something other than her Lion, but the Hatchcracker was humming happily under her hands, pleased to be doing what it had been designed for at long last. She had made a careful study of the controls over the last couple of days and used that knowledge well now, keeping the craft in the shadow of the asteroid field as much as she could, and heard Lizenne hum thoughtfully in the seat next to her.

“They've got everybody and their graal-cat out on watch for attackers,” the Galra woman muttered. “Not surprising, really, considering the fuss we've kicked up, plus what the Beronites are probably gearing up for right now. We may have to run the whole way while cloaked. How much time will your system give us, Pidge?”

“About three and a half minutes, with the spare,” Pidge replied, “this shuttle has a really good power core, and I've been tweaking the system for efficiency. If Allura can keep me supplied with power, I can keep the Center's detection systems from noticing us while you guys are raiding the lab. During that time, the power cores can recharge. All the same, don't take too long. I don't know how long we're going to be able to stay under the radar, and I figure that the Druids will notice if Allura pulls too much power out of the shields.”

“The Druids will have their hands full with us,” Lizenne said firmly, and then turned to face their passengers. “You have been keeping up with that aspect of your training, haven't you, children? We'll be facing more than one this time.”

“As much as we could,” Allura said, waggling a hand conditionally. “It was very difficult to get the training deck's simulation system to produce anything like your talents, but we did our best. We have also become far more sensitive than we were when you started training us.”

Lizenne nodded. “It will have to do. Nasty, if scary robed creatures with beaky masks start throwing fireballs around, get out of the way and quickly, but do not hesitate to strike if you see an unguarded back.”

Nasty grinned. “Lady, you're willing to stoop to backstabbing?”

“If it means that we survive and the enemy doesn't, then yes.” Lizenne replied firmly.

“You've got no honor at all, do you?” the Unilu asked curiously.

Lizenne shook her head. “Not when fighting quasi-aetheric abominations. Ask again when I'm fencing with something natural-born.”

“Lady, you've got class,” Nasty declared. “How come most Galra aren't like you?”

Lizenne raised an eyebrow. “Societal pressure, Imperially-mandated indoctrination, government interference, bad role models, and sheer laziness. I'm the proud product of stubborn nonconformity, insatiable curiosity, a mild tendency toward xenophilia, and seven years of enthusiastic barbarism. Plus, there is my own instinctive desire to face down anything that dares to threaten my pack and rip its throat out with my teeth. I'm a throwback, Nasty. We weren't always as you see us now.”

Nasty had recoiled from her suddenly fierce expression and was waving his hands about and spluttering desperate reassurances. Lance smirked, put on his most dewy-eyed, waifish expression, and said, “We _wuv_ oo, Scawwy Space Aunt!” in a ridiculous little-boy voice that had the others grinning in amusement.

Pidge giggled, and then sobered again as they reached the edge of the band of asteroids; there was nothing between them and the Center now but a lot of empty space and a whole lot of cranky warship captains with hair-trigger gunnery crews. “Allura, I'm going to need you up here soon,” she said, and a moment later, Lizenne hopped down from her seat, making way for Allura to climb up.

Allura settled into the oversized seat and frowned at the screens. “How do you suggest that we do this?”

Pidge rattled her armored fingertips on the control board. “The cloaking system will keep us covered long enough to get over there, but there won't be much time left over. Just enough to make a door and park the shuttle, I think. We'll have to pass through the outer aetheric shields first—we saw them during the search.”

“We did.” Allura shuddered. “They were huge! I cannot conceive of how much power went into making them!”

“Neither can I, which is why I'm not going to try to break them. All we need is a hole big enough to walk through.” Pidge held up one hand, thumb and forefinger curled into a circle. “We'll do it just like we discussed it earlier. The moment we get close enough, start siphoning off power and feed it to me. I'll get us through and keep us covered.”

“Correction,” Allura stated, _“I'll_ get us through. You'll have your hands full with penetrating that shield, whereas I can transfer power and fly at the same time. I did spend some time learning this ship's controls, so it shouldn't be a problem.”

Pidge didn't waste time mulling that over. The Hatchcracker might have been her toy, but Allura was the better pilot. “Fine. Let's just swap places, then... no wait, I can just switch over control by flipping this toggle...”

This might have continued for several more minutes, but they heard Hunk mutter in the back, “Are they playing musical chairs or something?”

“Pre-marauding jitters,” Nasty replied. “I see it all the time, especially with the new kids on their first big raid. The trick is to smack them over the head before their eyes start spinning in opposite directions, or they wet their armor or something. A stick usually works, but if you've got a dead fish handy, that'll do. Whatever it takes to get their attention.”

“Are we there yet, Papa Smurf?” Lance asked.

Allura and Pidge glanced guiltily at each other, exchanged sheepish grins, and settled down in their seats. “All right,” Pidge muttered, fixing her vengeful eye upon the looming hulk of the Center. “Let's do this.”

A tap on the controls rendered the Hatchcracker undetectable, and a second sent it out across the gulf of space at its best speed, and for the next two minutes or so, things were very quiet in the boarding craft. It was a surreal experience to waft gently through whole swarms of fighting craft as smoothly as a daydream through a classroom lecture, but not one single fighter out of that whole armada so much as twitched in their direction. The closer they got to the Center, however, the more Allura's nerves tingled, and Lizenne shifted uneasily beside her chair. “Outer shields coming up,” the witch muttered softly.

“I feel them,” Allura murmured back. “Pidge, I'm going to start pulling power now. Do you see how to open your hole?”

“Yeah,” Pidge replied slowly, flipping the toggle that switched control of the craft to the copilot. “The shields are like... sort of like a lot of gears, all spinning together. Really big gears, spinning really fast, but there are spaces between them, if you know what to look for. Just hold us steady on course and feed me power.”

Allura's hands gripped the control yoke, and she frowned in concentration at a field of energies that she felt more than saw. They _were_ visible to the naked eye, if only barely, as a faint, shifting curtain of something like sheer silk, all dyed in a sort of purplish-black, that enveloped the huge station from top to bottom. Any aetheric practitioner trying to push through it without invitation or experience in handling this sort of thing would soon be flat on the decking with a lump of damp charcoal where their brains used to be. On the other hand, the shield relied more on brute strength than on subtlety, and it wasn't particularly energy-efficient. Raw power leaked from the thing in a steady stream, and it was simplicity in itself to draw it in. Allura turned her head away from the screen and sneezed violently, although her hands never wavered on the controls, and a dark mist burst from her mouth and dissipated as she stripped Haggar's influence from those energies. Pidge received the power from her, and Allura heard her teammate grunt as she found one of those little gaps in the shield; she could see the hole open up in the flickering curtain, just wide enough for the Hatchcracker to slip through.

“Beautifully done,” Lizenne said encouragingly, and Pidge and Allura both grinned in triumph.

By this time, they had come very close to the station itself, and the thing loomed like a mountain before them, all dark-purple slopes and pale-lavender streaks of light, and great cannon barrels huge enough to hide the Castle in. It was hard to believe that this mighty structure had been built by mortal hands, and the sheer cost of construction and the amount of raw materials that had gone into it must have been astronomical. No structure on Earth had ever been so large, although some Altean efforts had matched it.

“Damn, that thing is huge,” Keith muttered uneasily. “I'd hate to be the guy in charge of keeping the floors clean. How long did it take to build?”

“Roughly ten thousand years,” Lizenne replied. “Parts of it predate the Empire. The Histories tell us that the heart and core of this station is one of the old colony ships, the _Ghram Parzurak,_ that took the survivors of the destruction of Zarkon's homeworld to Golraz Beta. That poor old thing was never meant to enter a planet's atmosphere, much less land on solid ground, so they just left it in orbit and built on additions as they needed them. It was a useful place to base a military outpost in, and then a government, and as time went on and the structure got bigger, the Throne itself and everything attached to it. It's rumored that Zarkon never really came to love his people's new home, and so planted himself in one of the few remaining fragments of the original. Ah. Steer the ship up another six or seven levels, if you would. We're almost there.”

“You can tell where we are from the outside?” Hunk asked.

She flicked him a smile over one shoulder. “Oh, yes. When I was still a girl, my mother insisted upon taking me on a tour of Haggar's labs, in the hope that I might be inspired to take up a career here. We came to the Center in her private starliner, and the lounge walls were two huge screens that showed the view outside. Mother had hoped that the sight of the Center during a slow approach would awe me. It didn't. I'd done some research and knew exactly which level the science deck was on, and that information has stayed firmly etched into my mind all this time because I muttered curses at each and every level above and below it for allowing such depravity to exist between them.”

Nasty cackled. “Now, that's my kind of reconnaissance! What did you do to the depraved level?”

“Threw up on a Druid.” Lizenne smirked evilly. “Quite deliberately. I was aiming for Haggar herself, but she was too fast for me, and they wasted no time in getting me out of there. Mother was furious, but the incident had finally gotten it through her thick skull that I _would not_ have anything to do with the Emperor's witch. Inner shields upcoming, ladies.”

It was harder the second time, for the shields were double-thick. Allura was shining like an arc lamp by the time that they had made it through and Pidge had a stress headache, but they had made it.

“Is this the right level?” Allura asked thickly; her nose and throat ached from sneezing denatured evil out of existence.

“One more level up,” Lizenne said, handing her a handkerchief and both of them packets of snacks from the storage locker nearby. “That's it. Make us a door, please.”

Pidge popped something crispy and delicious into her mouth and jabbed a particular button. The Hatchcracker vibrated slightly as the great beaklike prow extended itself, edges glowing with white-hot forceblades, and bit down hard on the station's thick hullplate. Pidge kept the station's hull integrity sensors from reporting the breach, and by the time that the Hatchcracker had sealed its own private airlock in, she had convinced the station's systems that nothing had happened at all.

“Your turn,” Allura said, and breathed out another long streamer of dark mist as she passed a dose of power to Pidge. “We'll hold the fort while the cloaking device recharges.”

Pidge glared at the screens. “Don't take too long, guys. They've upgraded the AI since the last time we were here, and it's a suspicious bastard. We won't be able to stay here much more than half an hour or so before it notices that it's got an extra exit, or that I've locked the science deck off from the rest of the station.”

Nasty laughed and hopped down from his seat. “The day I can't raid a house twice over in that time is the day they light my funeral pyre. Let's go! I've always wanted to see what the inside of an Imperial palace looks like.”

Hunk dropped down heavily next to him. “You're gonna be disappointed. These people don't go in for frills.”

“I'll be the judge of that,” Nasty retorted, heading for the lift that would take them down to the boarding deck.

The Hatchcracker had done its job well, setting in a huge, solid airlock that a person could drive a tank through with no trouble; they certainly wouldn't have any problems fitting Shiro's body through, and the doors slid open with a gratifyingly sinister hiss. Lizenne stepped through into the quiet, dimly-lit hallway and looked around for a moment to get her bearings. To the Paladins, it looked like any hallway in any other Galra structure they had ever seen—identical to all the others. “I've gotta ask,” Hunk said quietly, “just how do you find your way in all of this?”

Lizenne cast him a puzzled look and pointed at a patch of wall that was no different from any other patch. “You mean you can't see it?”

“See what?” Lance asked. “There's nothing there.”

She glanced at the wall again, muttered _“Oh,”_ and pulled a small hand-lamp out of a pouch. “I keep forgetting that you're diurnal. Your eyes don't work in quite the same way mine do. See?”

The hand-lamp clicked on, and under its reddish beam, bright red symbols became clear on the wall. Keith blinked at them and said, “Huh. And I'd just thought that those were smudges.”

Lizenne nodded and tucked the hand-lamp away. “Galra see further into the infrared than Humans do. Useful, if your ancestors did a lot of their hunting at night. The paint used for this sort of signposting is volatile, and emits enough heat to be visible to us, but not to all that many other races. Confusion to the enemy, eh?”

Lance smirked. “That's why it's good to make friends. Do you know where we are?”

“I do, but it's a bit of a hike to where we need to be.” She sighed and hefted her spear. “Ah, well. I haven't had a proper mad dash through the halls since the last time we played Blind Hunt. Follow me, and keep an eye out for those Druids. At least we won't have to worry about troops—those poor fellows won't go near a Druid if they can help it.”

They took off running through the endless halls, Lizenne making turns seemingly at random, and after a time, she paused at a certain intersection with a triumphant _hah._ The others were just glad enough to get an opportunity to get their breath back. “We're nearly to the biomechanics laboratories now,” she said quietly, sniffing at the air. “Haggar's private labs are just a little beyond those. We'll need to be very careful.”

“Druids,” Keith growled. “I can smell them.”

She nodded. “Oh, yes. Remember that we don't have Allura with us this time. I'll block anything they throw, but you'll want to take them down as quickly as possible. Hunk, you said that she had a few of her cyborgs patrolling around. Can you detect any nearby?”

Hunk concentrated for a moment, and then shrugged and pointed a finger down the hall. “Sort of. They're all off thataway.”

“In the direction of the labs. Of course.” Lizenne puffed an exasperated breath. “Those, at least, will not be able to teleport. Onward, my stalwart pack, and let fear never touch you.”

Something in Keith's blood resonated to her words, and he leaped into a determined run a half-second after she did, his mind bringing up his previous experiences with fighting Druids as he did so. They were nasty things, fast and agile, and he had to wonder if there were actually feet beneath those robes. They glided rather than walked, and could levitate for short distances as well as teleport. For all that they could shoot devastating bolts of dark energies, they preferred to use their claws. He remembered how easily Haggar had raked a hand-sized hole in Shiro's armor, and how a similar poisoned wound had been laid into Thace's chest. On the other hand, the one in Clarence's basement had been fairly easy to confound. _They aren't used to people who can fight back effectively,_ he thought to himself, _stay out of their reach, be at the right spot when they teleport, and don't give them time to cast hexes. Don't give them time to_ think.

A peculiar humming sound jerked him out of his thoughts, and he looked up to see Lizenne's spear gleaming with its own pale light, and a split second later he caught the mephitic stink of Druid strong on the air. _“'Ware!”_ Lizenne shouted, rounding a corner and swinging her spear at something that uttered a metallic screech of surprise and fury.

It was suddenly just _there,_ right in front of him, dull-purple robes seething with dark mists, yellow light blazing from the five eyeslits in the mask. Keith thrust his sword at its chest, and it vanished with an aetheric pulse that struck his already raw nerves like a drum. Those same nerves felt the return pulse a second later behind him, and he was already turning to face it when it came out. So was Hunk, whose fist smashed into its mask before it could move out of the way. The Druid staggered, clawing at its cracked face, which gave Lance an opportunity to club it on the back of the head with his bayard, and Nasty stabbed it in the rump with one of his longer knives for good measure. It screeched, teleported away, and was met with the bone spear. There was one final, horrified howl, a burst of dark vapors, and the creature disintegrated into thin air.

“Well, that's done it,” Lizenne said. “The others will have felt that, and will come looking for us.”

“Let them,” Keith said breathlessly, “it'll save us the trouble of hunting them down.”

“I'd just as soon skip that,” Nasty said disgustedly, holding up what was left of his knife. Whatever substances and energies the Druids were composed of, they weren't kind to steel, and the blade was badly pitted and discolored. “That was a genuine Pheshphar from the Uniltaway Forge! Guaranteed unbreakable, and it's gone as brittle as metzi wafers. You didn't warn me about this.”

Lizenne frowned at the damaged weapon. “That's because I wasn't aware that it would have that effect. Just use the cheap knives, Nasty, they're easily enough replaced.”

“I don't have any cheap knives!” the Unilu protested, but followed along anyway, grumbling sourly all the while.

Expensive or no, he soon found himself using them anyway. The other Druids had indeed felt the demise of their fellow and were hunting about in groups; the raiding party had just come out into a large room set up as a cafeteria when four Druids jumped them, hands crackling with arcane powers. Whatever hexes they might have fired popped and sputtered out at the five sharp words that Lizenne spoke, hanging golden upon the air and filling the room with the sharp smell of ozone. Startled by the failure of their own magic, they were in very poor position to face the very physical threat that the Paladins could bring to bear. Keith figured that he had faced worse, and felt grim satisfaction as one of the filthy creatures met its end on the point of his bayard, then ducked and rolled as another dark, stinking presence snapped into being behind him. There was a snarling hum above his head and another saw-edged shriek of woe—the spear had claimed another victim. He heard the distinctive sound of two different bayards discharging, and then it was over. The fight had taken no more than a few minutes. He straightened up and stretched out his shoulders with a sigh of relief. “Mage-battles really are short, aren't they?” he muttered.

“Oh, yes, particularly if you break their concentration first thing,” Lizenne flashed her teeth in a grin and wiggled her fingers at him. “Nothing upsets a practitioner like having a battle-spell unravel in its hands.”

“Whatever keeps them from frying our butts,” Lance said, and gave her a funny look. “Should your spear be doing that?”

The spear was glowing in the dim air and the blade shone like a star, and a thin, hissing cackle was emanating from it in a most unsettling way. Lizenne _tsk_ 'ed in admonishment at it, and the sound died down to an only faintly audible sussurrus. “Yes, actually. Allura gave it a good taste of one of its primary targets, and now it's had a taste of Haggar's essence—her power—as well. The more it absorbs from either of them, the more active it becomes. There are stories of some bone spears that actually got impatient with their bearer's caution, and went hunting on their own. Fortunately, this one seems to be willing to hold its pace to ours.”

“Creepy,” Hunk said, giving the thing a wary look, “but in a yay-it's-on-our-side kind of way.”

“For now,” Nasty said, sliding another badly damaged knife back into its sheath. “Magic weapons can get ugly fast if you use them wrong. Which way next, lady?”

Lizenne looked around and smiled. “We aren't far now. This is where Allura, Pidge, and I got a much-needed nap and meal the last time we were here. Just down that hall over there is our destination, and be ready for trouble. I would not put it past the Druids to be lying in wait for us by the door.”

“ _Nope,”_ Pidge's voice came faint and fuzzy over their comms. _“You're clear, people. I managed to get control of a few drones on that level, and I suckered the Druids into following them into one of the big containment rooms. They're all locked up tight. I couldn't do anything about the cyborgs, though. Sorry.”_

“Any help is good help, Pidge,” Keith replied, “thanks.”

“ _Yeah. Hurry up, guys. We're running low on cookies back here.”_

“Gotcha,” Lance said, and took off running again, the others at his heels.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a great big thank you to everyone who has left comments or kudos. It's a great feeling to know people enjoy the product of our crazed imaginations, and that we're not just screaming into the void. Although screaming into the void could be fun if you found the right things to scream. And Season 7 revealing that Bob is out there means it might not be as void-like as we thought....huh. I'll have to test this theory later with Spanch...


	10. Drama and Demolition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a new chapter for everyone! There is a mild trigger warning for description of severed body parts, due to the fact that they're all in Haggar's personal workspace. It's not too graphic, but I thought it would be best to mention it anyway for those feeling a little delicate today.

Chapter 10: Drama and Demolition

 

A few minutes later, Hunk swallowed hard and said, “Remember what I said about getting Haggar to turn football players into sporty mini-Robeasts?”

“Yeah?” Lance said.

“Forget it.”

There were only two of them standing sentinel outside of the entrance to the private labs, but that was six too many. They stood at least fifteen feet tall and must have weighed tons, and were built like battlewagons. They even resembled the first Robeast they had fought back on Arus, as a matter of fact, but were rather more sophisticated in design. They were still ugly as spit, with huge thick limbs, spikes in all the obvious places, had built-in energy weapons, and possessed more big sharp teeth than Lance could conveniently count. Lance shuddered at the feel of them, for they stank of evil, and he could sense within them the ruins of the people they had once been. Behind him, he heard Lizenne mutter a curse that sounded nastier than her usual stock of epithets. “I've seen this before,” she whispered tensely. “I've had to reverse this sort of thing once, and may Kuphorosk use her skull to bail out a cesspit, she's improved on the technique. This is what she tried to turn Modhri into.”

Lance heard Keith's sound of revulsion and fury. “Can we do anything for them?”

“A swift death. Nothing else can be done for them at this stage. There simply isn't anything left to salvage. Hunk? You're better at mechanisms than I am.”

Hunk groaned. “They're shielded, Lizenne. Pidge is right, that thing is too whack to crack.”

“Right,” Keith growled, “How about if I burn the shield off?”

“If you think you can do it, then give it a try,” the Galra woman replied, and glanced over at Lance. “Lance, be ready to cool him off if he overheats.”

Lance smirked. “You mean I've got permission to give him a snowball wedgie?”

“Lance...” Keith growled warningly.

“Whatever will do the trick,” Lizenne replied firmly. “Hunk, if they can handle the shield, can you deactivate those things?”

“Yeah,” Hunk said, pity in his eyes. “I just hate to have to put them down.”

Keith hissed and put away his bayard, eyes flashing with anger. “No way around it. Let's do this.”

The team burst out of hiding in a rush, and the two cyborgs responded immediately with grinding roars, springing into motion with frightening speed. The Paladins soon learned that whatever mad science had gone into creating these things, it was definitely an offshoot of the Robeast program. Getting close enough to one to burn off the shielding was not the problem, Keith thought to himself, it was getting close without getting dead that was the hard part. The cyborgs were fast, far too fast, and were bent on annihilating anything that got within range. When they weren't slamming around with fists that were larger than other people's heads, they were scorching thin, molten trails in decking and wallplate with laser guns; worse, the things knew how to work together, and it was all that Keith and the others could do to keep from being crowded into a corner and crushed. It wasn't until Nasty had sacrificed another knife by jamming it into the ankle joint on one of them that Keith got his chance; taking advantage of its abruptly restricted movement, he took a running leap at its flank, caught hold of a shoulder spike, and did the aetheric equivalent of putting flint to steel.

He'd practiced for this. Both Lizenne and his mother had scattered hexes around like sand in the training deck, and he'd discovered that if you knew where to strike, hexes were flammable. Like starting a forest fire or burning down a neighborhood, it only took a single match if the conditions were right. His first manifestation had been instinctive, using more force than finesse, but he'd improved since then. He could see the shielding on the cyborg now, not as Pidge's black-ice or mass of gearing, but as an intricate tangle of dry brambles, like the tumbleweeds back home. Bone-dry tumbleweeds, as his father had taught him, burned very hot and fast, and this was no different. The cyborg roared and threw him off with a powerful swing of its arm, but for just a second it was enveloped in scarlet-gold flame. That did not go unnoticed by Hunk, who lunged forward under its swing with one hand outstretched in a pose that a sumo wrestler would admire. His hand rested against its leg for just long enough; there was a terrible wrenching groan of metal in pain, and the thing collapsed into its component parts.

The second cyborg screamed in mechanical fury and rushed him, arms flailing mightily, then crashed to its knees when the humming glare of Lizenne's spearhead slashed through its leg armor, severing a number of important things in there. Keith was quick to repeat the ignition process, and Hunk took it apart practically before the burnoff was done. Lance, noticing that Keith was starting to steam around his collar, placed one hand on Keith's back and let a little of his influence cool his gasping teammate down, taking a bruise or two with it. “Thanks,” Keith panted. “Is everyone okay?”

“So far, so good,” Hunk replied with a grimace of distaste. “Wow, those felt gross. Nice work, guys. Can we wreck that lab now? I don't want Haggar making any more of those.”

“Find Shiro first, then wreck it,” Lance said. “He's already been wrecked, so a second time would be redundant. You okay, Teach?”

Nasty was swearing in a furious undertone as he inspected the knife that he'd used to cripple the first cyborg. “No! I am wounded to the quick, I am stripped of my puissance, I am undone entirely! That was my best knife, people. Genuine Basirlex titanium-core haplite blade, worth two hundred and seventeen thousand gac to the right buyer, and this miserable pile of parts has taken big chips out of the edge. It'd take a mastersmith to resurrect this thing now, and even the apprentices have a two-year waiting list for repairs! You guys are going to owe me big for this project.”

“You're the one who insisted on coming along, Nasty,” Lizenne pointed out. “Come on. Perhaps you'll find a replacement or two in the lab.”

The door was locked, naturally, although Nasty was far more in his element here. Low on knives he might have been, but his belt pouches were full of more arcane devices, and within a few minutes he had it open. The doors hissed aside, revealing a plain hallway that didn't look like the others they had just passed through. Wider and squarer, for one, and better-lit, with walls enameled a dull white. The contrast was jarring, but it made sense. Haggar was not Galra, after all, and however used she might be to carrying on that masquerade, she had to relax sometime. Aside from her own personal lair, this was probably her most private territory. Unfortunately, there was a lot of it. Room after sterile-looking room lined the corridors, doors open to reveal grim-looking exam tables and machinery that even Lizenne couldn't put a name to. Each room was spotless, disinfected right down to the molecular level, but there was a faint, pervasive stink in the air that had nothing to do with Haggar's aetheric signature. It raised the hairs on the Paladins' necks and made both Lizenne and Nasty glance around uneasily—the stink of old blood, strange chemicals, metals and machine oils, and of fear, despair, and pain. That stink got stronger when they passed a bank of large cells that did not even have the usual view-slit in the doors, although they were able to hear faint groans, whimpers, and scrabbling sounds through them.

Test subjects.

“Oh, crap,” Lance said in a thin voice, staring in horror at those grim portals, his more unusual senses telling him what was behind them. “Oh, crap. Lizenne, how do we--”

“We don't,” Lizenne replied, catching his shoulder in a tight grip and forcing him to keep moving. “Not yet, anyway.”

“You mean that you're just going to leave them in there?” Hunk demanded.

She shook her head, expression thunderous. “We have no choice. We have no time to help them, no way to get them out of this place, we have no resources to treat them, and all of them are beyond help in any case. See them, and see what was done to them! Death would be a mercy, but we can't stop now. You may set them free once we have what we came for, and may they devour every last one of the Druids we missed before they are cut down, but that's all that we can do.”

“Lizenne--!” Keith protested, but Nasty gave him a knock in the small of the back that stopped him mid-word.

“Shut up, kid, she's right. I hate to say it, but she's right.” Nasty shuddered and glared at the cells. “I've seen this sort of thing before. Not just like this, but close enough to count. First corsair I served on was old Captain Thlambat's _Rolling Thunder._ Hard man to work for, and his First Mate was a prize bastard—literally and figuratively. It's true, he used to show the new crewmen the trophy during orientation. We had docked at a dark port, and never mind which one it was, 'cause it got raided by Imperials while we were there. Most of the ships got taken, too, including the _Thunder,_ poor old thing, and I wound up having to hide in the port's catacombs for... Lawsy, it had to be most of a year before me and the Captain and a few other survivors could escape. The Galra had looted the port from top to bottom, then set it up as an industrial research complex, with the prisoners serving as slave labor and live resources. We tried to rescue some of them. It didn't work.”

“What sort of research were they doing?” Lance asked, a terrible suspicion rising in his mind.

Nasty rubbed at his eyes with one hand and grimaced in distaste. “All sorts of things, but mostly cybernetics. Most of my fellow crew had already been disassembled for spare parts. That was bad, but what was worse were the ones that had been reassembled, with more bits than they'd started with, or with less. You want to know what the really bad part was?”

“Do we want to know?” Hunk asked in a quivering voice.

“No, but I'm going to tell you anyway.” Nasty turned his head and spat. “Some of them looked normal. Like they'd had all the spirit kicked out of them, but normal. They wouldn't leave. One of them was the First Mate. Thlambat was fond of him, being some sort of relative or other, so he stunned the guy and carried him out, slung across his shoulders. We found out why the prisoners wouldn't leave after he woke up.”

“Implants?” Lizenne asked.

Nasty made a gesture of concurrence. “Yup. The Imperials that were doing the research? Ghamparva. They _like_ brain implants, and they'd sunk one into the First Mate that had turned him into their puppet. We didn't find that out until too late—the bastard played the grateful rescuee until he figured out exactly where our hideout was, and then called the cops. The usual atrocities happened after that, and then it was just me, the Captain, and six others. We managed to steal a ship and get out alive, barely, and we had to scuttle it and steal another as soon as possible because they'd implanted that, too. Eight people survived, out of more than seven thousand. We couldn't save them, and trying nearly got us all wiped out.”

Nasty waved a couple of hands at the cells. “There isn't any removing those implants, then or now, and I don't even want to think about what Haggar's loaded those poor souls with.”

“I know,” Lizenne said in a deadly voice that was echoed by a snarl from the spear she carried. “Oh, _I_ know, and I wish that I didn't. Such knowledge is the curse of those who must fight against this sort of thing, and it is a great incentive to see to the perpetrator's destruction.”

They passed the cell block without further comment, although they did have one more hangup before reaching their destination. Keith uttered a startled exclamation and darted into a small side chamber; when the others peered in, they found him trying to gather up a familiar suit of armor. Lizenne had to drag him out of the room by the collar. “That's not the part of him that we need, boy,” she told him sternly. “The Castle can make him a new suit, and the bayard is safely in Allura's hands.”

“It's Shiro's!” Keith snarled, trying to pull loose. “I'm not leaving anything of his here if I don't have to!”

“We might have to, not that it'll do our enemies any good. In any case, you're doing it wrong.” Lizenne pointed at a nearby storage locker. “There will be storage bags in the cabinets. If we have the time, we can stuff it into a sack and carry it along on the way out. Right now, we have responsibilities to the man himself.”

Keith groaned but could not dispute her reasoning, and Hunk gripped his shoulder in sympathy, Lance on his other side murmuring, “Hold it together, buddy,” in his ear.

The final door loomed before them soon after that, large and plain and unmarked, and completely inappropriate as to what a dread portal should look like. Somehow, that made it worse. It was locked as well, which surprised nobody. Nasty merely pulled out his sensors and decoder again and got to work, muttering something about security freaks under his breath. This lock was harder, and it took him a couple of tries before the lock popped open. The doors slid open quietly, leaving them to stare in horror at what lay beyond. No few of them gagged in disgust, and not just at the fog of Haggar's influence that lay heavily over everything in that room.

It was a large room, and the equipment it contained was both difficult to identify but easy to guess the purposes of, even for the Earthlings in the group, for all that Humanity hadn't developed those particular sciences yet. Or in a way, they had. It was just that things of that nature hadn't been in widespread use since the Spanish Inquisition, nor had the technology advanced far enough. Nasty was a little more knowledgeable, having seen some of it before. “Bionics lab,” he said uneasily, his already sallow coloration turning the color of spoiled milk. “There was a lot of this sort of thing in that Ghamparva research station I told you about. That thing over there is for extracting the bits you don't need, and that's for installing other bits, and if you want nervous tissue transplanted—eyes and brains and things like that—that ugly pile of tech over there is your machine. That thing with all the jars is for extracting vital fluids--”

Lance uttered a nauseated gurgle. “Stop. Just stop right there. I get it, she's a bad, evil, horrible person, we all know that, but if I'm going to be sick, I won't be able to stop. Where's the cold-storage room?”

Lizenne had gone pale under her fur, but her eyes were burning with outraged fury. “She's upgraded since the last time I saw this place. Ah, gods, I will kill her, and I will be very thorough about it. The cold-storage lockers are through that door there, and get that lock open as quickly as you are able. I want us out of here and gone as fast as possible. Hunk, are you all right?”

Hunk was staring around in open horror and outrage at the uses that otherwise perfectly decent machinery had been perverted into, and it made him angry. “I don't like this,” he growled. “I _really_ don't like this. I am not on board with any of this at all. Is it okay if I break everything in this lab?”

Lizenne smiled warmly at him. “By all means, you may render everything here unusable.”

“Cool,” Hunk said, and drew himself up to his full and not inconsiderable height. Raising his arms and clenching his fists, he bellowed, _“HUNK SMAAAASH!”_

Lizenne smiled as he moved off to create mayhem, and called after him, “Try to get everything down that far hall as well, please. I'm not sure, but that may be the main transformation chamber for making Robeasts.”

“On it!” Hunk called back, and there was much crunching as a large number of very nasty machines abruptly imploded.

“Such a dear boy,” she murmured fondly, and turned to the rest of the group, who were already clustered around the locked door, struggling feverishly to get it open. As she approached them, there was a flash of purple and an explosive curse from Nasty, who tossed a couple of slagged and smoking devices aside as though they'd bitten him. “What kind of crazy-stupid security system is this?” he demanded, shaking stinging fingers. “I happen to know that there wasn't a shock-trap in that door!”

“It's a hex,” Keith said, placing a hand over the lock. “Let me try.”

Keith had been doing his best to control his temper, but it had been an uphill struggle. The mere notion that some of those devices had been used on his best friend had fanned those flames, and as a result, his control over his newly-acquired talent was not quite as tight as it might have been. The others were forced to scramble out of the way as a wave of blistering heat destroyed not only the hex on the door, but slagged the lock itself. Nasty stared at the red-hot metal in astonishment, and then scowled at the red Paladin. “Kid, you've got a great future as an industrial welder, but not as a locksmith. Now what?”

Lizenne heaved a sigh and pulled her knife from its sheath. “Now this. Stand back.”

The others got a little more distance, and Lizenne took up a position before the doors, took careful aim, and then struck. There was a glint of ivory upon the air, and a brittle _crack,_ and the softened metal parted without difficulty. The door jerked open as if unwilling to argue any further with her, enveloping them in a soft rush of cold, stale-smelling air.

“Nice,” Lance said admiringly.

There was a groan from the Unilu. _“Nice?_ Nice?! Is that what you call it? You complete ignoramus, I _know_ this alloy! Even distempered like this, it'll shatter any blade short of a laser sword, and most of those, too! What _is_ that?”

Lizenne dropped the knife into his hands. “Zampedran tambok fang, and brother to my spearhead here. I have a lot of them, and they make excellent hunting knives.”

In his hands, the long blade was more of a short sword than anything else, a broad, finely-serrated, razor-edged streak of pseudo-ivory with a subtle glitter to it. He stroked the flat with reverent fingers, not being silly enough to test the edge with an unprotected finger. “Zampedran tambok fang,” he said in a breathless whisper, narrow eyes shining. “Lady, have you any idea how much anything from that world costs, much less anything from a large carnivore, and first-quality, too?”

She nodded. “Yes, which is one of the reasons why I decided to go native there. Not by any means the most important reason, but a reason nonetheless. Borrow the knife if you like and go exploring as you wanted to, Nasty. There won't be anything you'll want to see beyond this point.”

“I think I'm in love,” he said, testing the balance and finding it perfect. “No, I _know_ I'm in love, I'm just not sure whether I love you or the knife more. Meet you by the cafeteria in ten!”

Nasty darted off to go and try out his new toy, leaving the three of them standing in the chill breath of the cold-storage room. Keith watched him go, and then cocked a worried look at the tall Galra woman. “Lizenne, he's a professional knife-fighter and a pirate. I sort of think that he's used to seeing blood and guts and stuff like that. And you don't want him seeing what's in there?”

“No.” Lizenne said and glared at the long bank of big steel stasis units visible through the doorway. “I would not wish this on anybody, but we have no choice. This way, he will have something to show for his efforts that will not give him nightmares. Let's get this over with.”

“So, it's okay for us to get horrible nightmares?” Lance asked, following her reluctantly into the room; the chill that breathed off of the lockers was more than merely physical, and something down at the back of his mind cringed from even so faint a contact.

“You are heroes. It comes with the job.” Lizenne pulled open a drawer, gave the contents a critical look, and slid it closed again. “It's the price all heroes must pay, and in a way, it's very necessary to your development. This is what we are trying to stop, gentlemen, and it is vital that you get a good look at it. Now stop shuffling about and help me search.”

Seeing that Keith had already yanked open a locker and was up to his elbows in what looked to be shrink-wrapped people parts, Lance had no choice but to do the same. It was worse than he had feared, and his stomach began to churn. Not because the first thing he saw was someone's opened-up and emptied-out torso, although that was a whole new flavor of ghastly, but because of what his aetheric senses were telling him. There was nothing of Earth in that first locker, nor in the second, and by the time that he'd gotten to the fifth, his complexion was starting to match Pidge's armor. Halfway through the neatly-cataloged packets, he had to stop. “I'm gonna be sick,” he muttered thickly, trying to keep the bile in his throat from rising to critical levels.

“Find Shiro first, then be sick,” Lizenne snapped, sorting through a collection of hands.

“I've found Shiro. Can I be sick now?”

Keith dropped the rather peculiar organ he'd been staring at and rushed over, and Lizenne was right behind him. Both of them had to stare. Lizenne recovered first, and she reached out eagerly for the nearest portion. “Oh, we are in luck!” she exclaimed delightedly. “Zarkon must have wanted to deploy him immediately. Here's the head! The whole head, with both eyes and the brain still present. Ah, and some of the spinal cord, too. Excellent. Lance, hold this for me, will you?”

Lance squawked in distress when she dropped Shiro's cranium into his hands and stared in horror at the pale, plastic-wrapped face, the eyes half-open and blank as plugs of lead. That alone would have been sufficient to give him year's worth of nightmare fuel, but the shock to his aetheric senses drowned that right out. Something in his heart recognized the head as still viable, but in a horrible way, it also insisted that the most important part, the very core of this object, simply didn't exist. Raw horror slicked a trail of ice up his back at that sensation, and he had to force his frozen hands not to drop the plastic-wrapped packet. He wasn't the only one upset by this situation—a glance up at Keith told him that everything was going to go boom soon; his teammate's eyes had that manic look he got when he was just this side of freaking out completely. Lizenne seemed completely oblivious to his mood, and was digging around for more.

“Yes, entirely excellent. There is far more here than I had expected to find,” she was saying, pulling down this part and that as though they were no more distressing than strings of sausage. “Here is the original right arm... aha, and the heart, and... hmm. Keith, is this a Human liver?”

Keith made an inarticulate gurgle of rage and revulsion.

“Never mind, we'll take it along anyway.” She sorted around a little more, but found nothing else. “Good enough. Lance, will you please check those for spoilage, especially the arm? It's been here a long time. Keith, get a grip on yourself and check these for impurities. The gods only know what she might have injected him with.”

“Lizenne...” Lance whimpered, trying to find some way to hold Shiro's head that wouldn't upset Keith even more, and failing, “you're not helping.”

She humphed. “I know, it's horrible, but it's necessary.”

Lance gulped and handed the head back _—oh god, it feels like something made out of clay—_ and said in a sick voice, “Lizenne, you don't understand. These... uh... parts... they're empty. There's nothing there. Haggar scraped all of his... his Shiro-ness out of them... but... but they're _still sort of alive.”_

She nodded, taking the head from him. “Of course they are, on a cellular level, at least. If they were dead, they'd begin to decompose, and that would render them worthless. Standard laboratory procedure. Keith, please calm down and make sure that she hasn't poisoned him, will you?”

“ _Grrrrnaaaghhh!”_ Kieth replied, quivering all over from the sheer rage that threatened to overwhelm him.

Lizenne sighed, put Shiro's head back in Lance's cringing hands, and enfolded Keith in her arms, holding him close. “Easy,” she murmured gently, although her voice was strangely brittle. “I feel much the same way. Haggar has taken my eldest nephew down to pieces, yes, but we will rebuild and revive him. She will not have him. Death itself will not have him. He will walk and run and speak again, he will spar with you and share his wisdom, and he will have the honor of taking the first sip of spring wine from the  _shurgha_ cup that I will make of Haggar's skull, but we can only do that if you can control yourself long enough to make sure that she has left no taint in him. Do this for your brother's sake, my nephew. Once we have him checked over and packed up safely,  _then_ you can torch the living shit out of this place.”

Keith shuddered, whimpered in stress, but he heaved a long sigh that steamed thickly in the cold air, and that seemed to help somewhat. “All right,” he croaked, his voice cracking around the edges as he pulled free of her embrace. “All right. I'll hold you to that. How come you're not freaking out?”

She smiled, but her smile was like a broken mirror, the skin beneath the facial fur was nearly gray, and her eyes were wide and red-rimmed. “Because I am exerting an enormous amount of control over myself. Believe me, young man, I will scream and cry and rage on like a woman demented, but not before I have our payload safely cooking along in a cloning tank. Check them now, please. I want to get out of this hellhole. Lance, you too. I'll go find us a hovercrate to pack them up in.”

Somehow, they managed to hold themselves together long enough to make sure that the pieces of their leader were in decent condition. There was no...  _yeeeugh..._ spoilage in any of the parts, not even in the...  _urk..._ arm, but there was a whole slew of weird chemicals floating around in the...  _aargh-aargh-aargh-yes-that-is-a-Human-liver..._ organs and...  _ohgodohgod, don't puke..._ brain and nervous tissue. One of them was the solution that was keeping the...  _oh, holy crow, really don't puke..._ tissues alive, and they had to exert an iron-hard control over themselves to get rid of all of them except that one. They were both sweating and trembling with the effort when Lizenne came up with a small float-crate and began to pack those freshly-cleaned parts inside, and both of them felt intense relief when the lid closed over Shiro's empty face. “Well done,” she murmured, her voice still slightly brittle. “Let's go find out what Hunk's been up to, shall we?”

They agreed readily. Anything, anything at all to leave this place! The hovercrate floated smoothly along under Lizenne's hand, and they stepped out into a lab transformed. There was not one single mechanism still intact in there, and as they left the cold-storage room, it abruptly went dark when the power in there went out. Keith, Lance, and Lizenne shared puzzled looks as the lights out in the main lab also flickered and dimmed. The float-crate also sank to the floor with a soft _whuff_ of dying antigravs, making Lizenne humph disapprovingly, and they followed the trail of destruction to its natural conclusion. In the center of a very large room, the emergency dims revealed Hunk standing atop a small mountain of smoking wreckage, arms crossed and with a satisfied expression on his face. Lizenne laughed, the jagged sound of it echoing eerily off of the walls. “We'll face no more monsters for a while, that's for certain,” she said cheerfully.

Lance managed a smile. “Had fun, Hunk?”

“You could say that,” Hunk replied, sliding down from the heights. “There was some really nasty stuff here, guys. I mean, really bad. She's not gonna be able to do that again, not here. She'll have to go out to Chez Ralph's Chicken-Fried Buzzsaw-Squid and Murder Hut if she wants to dish up any more evil. Just got done laying in the hex.”

“Hex?” Keith asked.

Lizenne blinked, and then looked around with a more discerning eye. “Yes, and a very elegant one. That's very clever, Hunk. You've laid it right into the substance of the station itself.”

He grinned proudly. “Yeah. Nothing'll work on this whole level anymore, not even a hand-cranked eggbeater.”

“And never will again.” She gave his cheek a fond pat. “They'd have to pull the entire level out, essentially slicing the entire station in half, and I'm not sure even that would help. Beautifully done. All right then, we seem to be finished.”

“Not quite yet,” Keith said quietly, and there was the roar of a bonfire under his words. He could feel what had been done in this room raw on his skin, he could hear the last, lingering screams of the victims, he was drowning in the stench of the evils that had been done here, and it all had to _BURN..._

“Oh, crud!” Lance yelped, feeling the heat boiling off of Keith, his nose catching the first sulfurous whiff of scorched hair. Unable to think of anything else to do about it, he lunged over and caught his friend from behind, wrapping his arms around Keith's chest and holding on tight.

Keith let go of the rage that had been building inside of him ever since they had discovered who the third Robeast had really been. It came out of his soul and into the physical realm in a volcanic rush of golden-scarlet flame. Keith saw nothing but fire, knew nothing but fire, the vast urge of fire to reduce everything back down into the pure state of heat and light. That might have included himself as well, but for the cool, quiet place in the center of it all, and he felt the wheel of balance turning.

_:purify/heal:--:purify/heal:--:purify/heal:_

Fire and water, turning in the endless dance of the elements, at once opposed and entwined, and in that entwinement, as one. It was right that this was so, and something in Keith reveled in that rightness. He felt the sharp, refreshing sensation of Lance's energies flowing around him like a cool swim on a hot day, and how his own heat kept that fluidity from freezing into the dire immobility of ice. Burn away evil, wash away all traces. Burn out the poison. Mend the damage left behind. Keith had never felt anything quite like this, and knew that Lance shared it, and how they welcomed each other in this strange, soaring euphoria.

How long it continued, neither of them could tell, and both Lance and Keith sagged bonelessly to the floor when it finally flickered out, utterly exhausted. Keith looked up, blinking to clear his fuzzy vision, and stared. The room itself was still there, although the walls were veined with stress cracks. The pile of machinery that Hunk had heaped up... wasn't a heap anymore. It was a pool, still glowing a dull red and making little pinging noises as it cooled.

“Wow,” Hunk said. “Can I do things like that?”

Kieth looked up further to see that Lizenne had englobed them all in a filmy golden shield, which she canceled a moment later. “Pray that you never get that angry, Hunk, you'll probably wind up crystallizing somebody's starship.”

He nudged her gently in the ribs with a smile. “It'd be pretty. I think Shay would like it.”

“Yes, but you had better hope that you've got Pidge on hand to keep you separate from the lattices, or you'll wind up fossilized in the middle of it.” She nudged Keith in the rump with a toe. “Very fancy, Keith, but self-indulgent. Lance, that was very quick thinking, but you'll need to learn to pace yourself a bit. Are either of you capable of walking?”

“Nope,” Lance said blurrily. “All pooped out. Wanna sleep now.”

Keith struggled to speak, but was only able to manage a _“yuh”_ sort of noise.

Hunk puffed an exasperated laugh and slung them both over his broad shoulders, taking their weight easily. “I got my boys,” he said, patting their bottoms fondly. “Let's get back to the shuttle.”

“Not before you fix something for me,” Lizenne said, indicating an object back down the hall behind them. “The crate we've packed Shiro's body into deactivated as well.”

“Oops,” Hunk said sheepishly, “sorry.”

A touch from his hand was all it took, and they hurried back toward the cafeteria.

 

Nasty was waiting for them at the cafeteria, sitting on one of the stools looking offended about something and occasionally kicking a sack full of something that clonked dully with each impact. He perked up at the sight of them and hopped down from his seat, heaving the bag over his shoulder and calling out, “Got what you came for?”

“Mission accomplished,” Hunk panted, “with extra destruction. This level's toast.”

“Good!” Nasty declared, falling into step beside them as they made their way out. “This whole hopeless pile of plurf poop deserves it.”

“No argument there,” Lizenne puffed, shifting her spear to a more comfortable angle under her arm. “No more talking. Save your breath for moving fast.”

They took that advice to heart, pausing only to release the test subjects from their cells before returning to the shuttle in a gasping rush. It was with great relief that they sealed the airlock behind them and headed for the lift. Pidge and Allura looked no better than they did, and were indeed down to the last cookie when the lift brought them up to the passenger deck.

“ _There_ you are,” Pidge said wearily, “you guys got back here just in time. What the heck did you do? The ambient temperature spiked like whoa, and the power's gone out in that entire level.”

“More importantly, what happened to Keith and Lance, and did you find Shiro's body?” Allura asked, still glowing a steady pink as she moved to disengage the Hatchcracker from its mooring.

“Keith and Lance were responsible for the temp spike and Hunk killed the power, among other things.” Lizenne patted the hovercrate before settling it down under the seats, securing her spear safely into a bracket above it to keep it out of trouble. “We found some of Shiro. The most important parts, anyway. Don't ask what Haggar did with the rest.”

Pidge wrinkled her nose up in disgust. “Wait, let me guess, she'd already turned them into other things?”

Lizenne eased herself up onto a seat with a tired grunt, reaching down to help Hunk get Keith and Lance up onto the seats next to her. “Nothing so baroque. Her other experiments needed feeding, probably. We've got the head, hand, heart, and a bonus liver, and that's all that we really needed.”

Allura made a small noise of distress in the back of her throat and said in a thin, quivering voice, “I've changed my mind, Pidge. I don't want the cookie. You can have it.”

“No thanks, Allura,” Pidge replied just as thinly, “I don't want it either.”

Hunk shoved Keith into place and held out a hand. “I'll take it. Smashing makes me hungry.”

The first part of the return trip was as uneventful as their approach, the cloaking system having had just enough time to recharge properly. Pidge had just slipped them through the outer shield when suddenly every Galra warship around them began to converge on the station, whole swarms of fighter craft whipping around like flocks of starlings in a panic. Pidge rubbed at her face and smiled a tired and sardonic smile. “The AI's finally noticed that something was wrong. Anybody think to write 'Kilroy was here' on the wall?”

Hunk snapped his fingers. “Drat. I knew I forgot something.”

“Who's Kilroy?” Nasty asked, curiosity bringing him out of his sulk.

“Old war joke from home,” Pidge replied. “I'll explain later. Wow, look at them go! Whatever you did write on the walls must have been pretty rude.”

The warships were zooming around the Center in frantic orbits now, searching for anyone or anything that shouldn't be there and finding nothing. Aside from having to dodge a few outliers, Allura was able to get them back to the Castle with no trouble at all. Coran met them on the bridge with his usual ebullience, and, more importantly, lunch. Modhri, bless him, had run up a batch of the yulpadi stew that they liked so much before heading back to the _Chimera_ , and even Keith and Lance revived enough to devour their share of it. Nasty, alas, had to make do with a plate of capparnuk sandwiches; his kind couldn't digest Zampedran proteins, but he joined the others on the floor in their cluster around the tureen out of camaraderie anyway. Zaianne, who had already had lunch, patiently guided the Castle and the _Chimera_ out of the increasingly crowded star system, taking the two ships to a secluded spot some seventy-eight lightyears away where they wouldn't be bothered for a while.

“So,” she said over a soft chorus of satisfied belches, “how'd it go?”

“As well as could be expected,” Lizenne replied, licking her spoon clean, and then proceeded to report on their adventure in brief, blunt terms that turned the others pale. “Nasty had a better time of it than we did, I assume,” she finished up, “for he had himself a nice sack of swag when we met him in the cafeteria.”

Nasty had his mouth too full of sandwich to vocalize more than a disdainful grunt, but three of his hands described a series of rude gestures that made him look as though he might be juggling at least six live crabs. “Swag, she says!” he spluttered angrily once he'd washed down his mouthful with a sip from his glass. “Not hardly. That sack's full of a certain dismantled Paladin's working clothes. Can you believe that that thing was the only physical item of value on that entire level? Yeah, sure, I broke into the computer banks and stole a lot of data, but if it doesn't make your pockets clink, it's not really loot.”

“It was a science deck, Nasty,” Allura said patiently, “one doesn't gold-plate a torture device.”

He humphed and crossed his lower arms. “Some do, I've seen 'em. Plosser had a set of knuckle-dusters made out of pure thelonium, or he did before he lost them in a game of cards. I can't believe that the Emperor of most of known space and the craziest witch alive wouldn't spend more than a handful of gac on their own living quarters. There wasn't so much as a gem on that throne or a silken tapestry hanging on the wall anywhere in there. I got into the security cam system and checked. Nothing!”

Zaianne shrugged. “Zarkon's a warleader at heart; the Histories tell us that his family line considered lavish decorations effete at best, and went for a more austere style.”

Nasty waved all four fists in the air and brought them down hard on the floor. “Oh, come on! That's totally against the rules. The Imperials are the biggest thieves in the whole universe. They've even got a whole armada of ships that do nothing but haul other people's treasure around. I know this, me and the Fleet have caught a few of 'em! The whole point of tyrrany is to steal everyone else's stuff, and then do something really extravagant with it, like plate an entire palace inside and out with precious metals and gems. That way, the rest of us down at the bottom of the social ladder can steal it from them, which keeps it in circulation, which is the whole point of money! Those  _degenerates!_ It's the Great Circle of Cash and a law of nature! How else do you show off your position in society, or your skill at stealing it?”

“With mud, usually,” Coran said.

“What?” Nasty asked suspiciously.

“Mud,” Coran said, leaning against his console and tugging soberly at his mustache. “Like the Holy Priest-Kings of Yullup. Lovely planet, Yullup, very heavy on the rare metals and gems and fine textile fibers, so much so that they valued the simpler things far more than the fancy ones. Why, the higher in society you were, the more poorly you dressed! You had beggars wandering around in velvets and gems, while the High King himself wore nothing more than a layer of mud.”

Nasty narrowed his eyes at the Altean. “You are  _yashukking_ me.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” Coran rebutted easily. “It was the best-quality mud, of course. From a sacred spring, I believe. It was certainly a lovely shade of green, and the King's attendants would spend hours drawing the most intricate designs in it. His hat of office was a nice large pat of the same mud. A bit heavy, he admitted to us once, but wonderfully cool and soothing if he had a headache. Alfor and his team had to run off an attacking alien race for him once, and Zarkon in particular was so heroic in that endeavor that at the victory banquet the King afforded him a great honor.”

“Oh, dear,” Zaianne murmured, casting her eyes up at the crystal glinting overhead. “And what was that, pray tell?”

Coran smirked. “He'd impressed the King so much that the old fellow allowed him the honor of wearing a stick to dinner, just like his own highest-ranking courtiers.”

“A stick,” Nasty echoed in a flat voice. “Just a stick?”

“Well, no, not _just_ a stick. It had four whole leaves on it. Quite nice ones, too.” Coran gave them a nostalgic smile. “Variegated gnavlop plant, streaked in green, white, and red. Very stylish, and it contrasted nicely with his natural skin tone. He was very polite about it and we were proud of him for that, but Alfor and the others nearly ruptured themselves trying not to laugh. Never went back there, oddly enough, for all that we got no end of party invitations.” 

There was a faint chorus of groans and snickers from the Paladins, who were too tired to not find that funny. Lizenne smiled wryly and set her bowl aside. “I hate to tell you this, Nasty, but that tale is true. That planet and people still exist, surprisingly enough, although their priest-kings are wearing slave uniforms rather than sacred mud these days, and even beggars may have their choice of dirt. I found the episode recorded in a hidden archive on one of their moons, and I'll have you know that I laughed about it all week. On a more pressing note, I must get back to my ship.” She pointed a finger at the hovercrate floating ominously nearby. “I need to get Shiro's body into the reconstruction array as soon as possible. Thank you very much for the meal, Coran, it was greatly needed.”

Keith dropped his spoon into his bowl and lurched upright. “Wait, I'm coming with you!”

Lance was right behind him. “Me, too.”

Hunk copied their example, as did Pidge and Allura. “None of us will be able to sleep until we see him safely contained in that system,” the Princess said gravely. “Will you allow us to follow you?”

Lizenne gave her a regal nod at this request. “I will, and even allow you to help, if you wish. The moment that I break the seal on those wrappings, the clock will be ticking. If you can keep the parts pristine while I get them arranged in the tank, it will greatly increase our chances of success.”

“You mean there's a chance that it'll fail?” Keith asked urgently.

“There is always a chance,” Lizenne said, “no matter how careful one is. Your help would be gratefully received.”

“Then you'll get it,” Hunk said firmly, placing strong hands protectively on the crate. “Let's do this.”

 

They found Modhri in the  _Chimera's_ medical bay, running checks on the equipment. “There you are,” he said quietly, and then spotted the crate, which was by no means large enough to carry a whole man. “Oh dear.”

“Indeed,” Lizenne said shortly. “Is it ready to accept the patient?”

He shook his head, although he never took his eyes from the crate. “There's a system error somewhere between hardware and software that I can't locate, and I've been through it three times. I think—what?”

Hunk had nudged him gently aside, and got a grip on the mechanism while Pidge took up a position at the controls. Even though the thing had a small resemblance to certain of the devices that they'd seen only an hour or so earlier, none of the Paladins flinched at the sight of this machine. It was  _clean—_ secondhand though the ship might be, nobody had ever used it for evil, and so the glassy tank with its built-in scanners and manipulators gave them no qualms, nor did the monitors and less recognizeable devices attached to the frame. Whatever might have been in there before this time had come out alive, whole, healthy, and sane. It was easy to spot the problem, and Hunk and Pidge homed in on and fixed it with no trouble. Hunk stepped back with a satisfied smile as the tank beeped and hummed awake. “Nothing I couldn't handle,” he told Modhri. “Just a few things joggled loose. All better now.”

Pidge smirked at their audience. “Probably something left over from when Haggar's curse hit the ship. A few lines of code got corrupted. I fixed that.”

Modhri gave them that special smile that made them feel like the most awesome people in the world. “Thank you. Just tell it to fill the tank, if you would, and specify for a carbon-based, oxygen-breathing organism with iron-based hemoglobin. How much of him did that monster leave us, Lizenne?”

“More than I had expected, and less than I had hoped,” she said over the gurgling of the tank as it filled up with some sort of mysterious bluish fluid. “Haggar does not forgive easily, and I don't think that anyone other than Shiro or Allura has landed a blow upon that woman in a thousand years at least. Please set up the cleansing booth. We need to decontaminate, and I need to prepare.”

Modhri flicked a finger at something about the size and of a standard doorframe at the other end of the room. “Already done, and I've sterilized the tools and work surface as well. Will you all be helping her?”

That last was addressed to the Paladins. All of them held up their hands. “We will,” Keith said firmly, for all that his voice sounded a little chipped around the edges. “Lance and I already did... did the preliminaries. We just need to make sure nothing goes in that we don't want in there.”

Modhri nodded. “Quite right, and with Allura and the others supporting you. Very wise. Now, go get clean—just walk through the booth, and you'll be cleaner than you've ever been in your life.”

Lizenne had already done so, so they followed suit. Lance, overtired already, couldn't help but burst into chortles at the odd tickly, tingly sensation of having all of the surface grime beamed off of his body. Keith was less amused; he had actually experienced this before, but not in a place that he'd liked. The cleanser in the Temple on Boniro had been related to this device, and he'd never been through it unless it was after he'd been forced to kill someone.

Keith shook those memories off; Lizenne had reemerged from the next room over, gloved, gowned, and robed in an outfit that looked a bit like hospital scrubs, complete with a hood and transparent face shield. To keep any portion of herself from getting mixed in with Shiro, he realized, and wasn't all that surprised when she waved them all into the back room as well. In there, an even more peculiar device scanned them and provided similar outfits, which they were required to put on, and then they took another walk through the cleanser. Preparations complete, then and only then was the crate opened and the parts removed.

_Parts,_ Keith thought to himself.  _Just think of them as parts._ The anger had left him, leaving an aching hollow in his heart that felt like a freshly-emptied ash pit. No more anger, no... but the sight of those few remaining parts lying lifelessly on the nearby table made him want to cry. He had the strength for one more purification, energy lent to him by that bowl of stew he'd just devoured, but he didn't know if he would have enough left over to stop the tears if he let them start. Instead, he concentrated on Lizenne's hands.

She'd trimmed her nails to keep them from poking holes in the gloves, but they were no less graceful than usual as she lifted the...  _oh god, don't think about it as a head! It's a packet. Packet is safer right now..._ lifted the packet in one hand and used a rather odd hand tool to slit the transparent wrapping. “Keith, Lance, keep anything from fouling this,” she said in a low, even voice, “Allura, Pidge, Hunk, give them what encouragement you can.”

Keith felt Allura's hand come to rest on his shoulder, and felt the warm flush of energy that she funnelled into his depleted spirit. It wasn't just her—he felt Pidge in there, and Hunk, and knew that they were helping by offering up their own energy. He narrowed his eyes and concentrated with singleminded intensity on keeping Shiro's most important part absolutely clean and uncorrupted, and he felt Lance doing the same.

Lizenne lifted the head out of its wrapping and laid it on the table, then used another small tool to take a tiny snippet of flesh from the severed neck. This was set aside, and she lifted the head and lowered it carefully into the tank, where the manipulators moved it into a holding position. The tool with the snippet was fitted into a socket in the control board, and the machine whirred and chirruped like a colony of starlings for a moment. The manipulators positioned the head a little further up in the tank—at precisely Shiro's height, Keith realized, and then Lizenne reached for another packet.

“The arm next,” she told them, “he'll be glad to have it back, I think.”

Another flush of warmth flowed into him from Allura, and he saw the rosy glow of her out of the corner of his eye as he switched his gaze to the limb being freed of its containment. That one needed more work; it had been separated from the body for a very long time, and was more prone to fouling than the more recently taken parts. Still, it was as clean and viable as the day it had been born when it went into the tank, and the manipulators positioned it exactly, recalling the breadth of the man's shoulders.

“The heart,” Lizenne said calmly. “Have a care, they're surprisingly complex.”

It was. Keith forced himself to block out everything but what he was doing, to chase the last dregs of Haggar's potions out of that organ, and felt Lance wash away what damage those strange chemicals had already done. Shiro's body would be in better health than ever, when it came out of that tank. For the time being, at least, it was stuck there, and he watched the heart being positioned slightly left of the center of where the chest should be.

“And finally, the liver,” sighed Lizenne, sounding tired. “Only one, and rather large. How curious. I'll have to make a thorough study while we rebuild him. One last effort, my valiant nephews.”

The liver was even worse. Keith's biology teacher in high school had once referred to the human liver as the body's chemical filtration plant, and she hadn't been wrong. He just hadn't expected to get so close a look at the inner workings of one, was all, and he was astonished by the complexity of it. The one saving grace was that he now knew the shape, scent, and color of the poisons Haggar had used very well, and was able to discern them from the efforts of this organ to filter them out of Shiro's blood. It took a huge effort, but it was clean when it slipped beneath the surface of the tank's fluids. Another touch on the controls had a lid closing tightly over the top of the tank, and the entire array began to hum quietly to itself as it contemplated this not inconsiderable project.

“Done,” Lizenne said, slotting the tools and work surface into a nearby cleanser. “We may disrobe now, and I thank you all for your efforts. We all need to rest.”

Keith was shaking with exhaustion and emotion. They'd done it, they'd succeeded in stealing back what the enemy had stolen from them, so why did he feel like bawling like a baby? He removed his scrubs with hands that felt like the appendages from someone else's wooden mannequin, and when he stepped away from the waste bin, he stumbled, and would have fallen if Hunk hadn't wrapped an arm around him him. Hunk's warm bulk was incredibly comforting, but very hard on his self-control, as were the purple-furred fingers that took hold of his chin, and the topaz-colored eyes that stared with such sympathy into his own.

“Get him back into the Castle,” he heard her telling the others, “into the lounge, by preference. Hold him, and don't let go. I'll call his mother.”

“You're not coming?” Lance asked.

“No. Not this time. My needs are far better served here.”

“I'll take care of her,” Modhri said gently. “Now go, before you all simply drop where you stand.”

Later on, Keith would have no memory of getting back to the Castle's lounge. He was aware of dropping down onto the couch cushions, and of Hunk settling down on one side of him, and of Lance on the other. He could feel Pidge and Allura close by as well, but it was his mother's hand stroking his face, velvet-furred and palms calloused from years of wielding a sword, that finally cracked the shell. He clung to Hunk's shirt and dissolved into tears, pouring out all of the grief and loss and fear that had pooled in him since that horrible day when Voltron had first faced Zarkon and had survived, although at a terrible cost. His team—his family—closed in around him, holding him warm and safe while he sobbed into Hunk's shoulder, and he couldn't stop. He couldn't stop. There was so much pain in him, and the pit of it was so deep that it threatened to swallow him whole. It wasn't until he felt small fingers rubbing him behind his ears that the flow of tears slowed; something about that caress warmed him deeply inside, calming his jagged emotions. _Pidge_ , he thought dimly, leaning into her hands. It felt so good, so soothing, that he never noticed it when he finally fell asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All who feel that Haggar is still the scariest creature in the whole Voltron series, please raise their hands. ^_^ And like always, a big THANK YOU to those that take the time to comment or leave kudos. It is the source of all our power and keeps us charged as we continue to write space shenanigans.


	11. Quiet Progression

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. This chapter is kind of late, and the only one I can blame is myself. I had three days off from work, and spent most of them sleeping. Except for the evening I went to a friend's place and watched the animated Batman series. Ah, memories... Anyway! Sorry for the wait, and I hope that you all enjoy this next installment!

Chapter 11: Quiet Progression

 

Keith crept back into wakefulness slowly, and wasn't sure that he liked it. His head hurt, his eyes felt sore and gritty, his mouth tasted like glue, his brain felt like a lump of dishwater jell-o, and the rest of his body had an entire list of bitter grievances about yesterday's activities to present to the management. He was warm, though, and in good company. He was leaning on Hunk, who was still snoring blissfully away, and Lance was snuggled up against his back. Pidge's unmistakable whiffle was coming from nearby, and his nose detected Allura's sweet, earthy scent as well; after a moment's debate, he compromised with his sore body by opening one eye.

It ached, and was a little blurry until he wiped the gravel out of it. Salt crystals. He'd been crying. He hadn't cried since he'd gotten the official notice from the army command that his Uncle Jake wasn't going to be coming home ever again. He felt a warning prickle in the corners of his eyes again and tried to distract himself from those bad memories by looking around. They were in the lounge, all piled together on one couch, and still wearing their clothes from yesterday. Keith wondered vaguely if he should try waking the others up so that they could go and maybe get a shower and breakfast, but he didn't really have the energy. He was still too tired out from yesterday.

The memories of that adventure came leaking back in slow dribbles of horror syrup, complete with the gross parts in slow motion, as though the nightmares scheduled for last night hadn't been able to get through to his subconscious while he'd been asleep and had sort of congealed on the doorstep. He grunted in distaste, and then looked up at the sound of a soft footstep on the decking. His mother had entered the room, a furry purple angel of mercy bearing a pitcher of what smelled like iced tea and a basket of lelosha wraps on a platter. She smiled at the avid gaze he was giving the food, set her burden down on the table, and poured him a drink.

“Good morning,” she murmured, handing him the glass. “Sorry about leaving you all here overnight, but we couldn't get you apart. You were all sleeping like the dead, in any case.”

Keith drained half the glass in a single gulp, which refreshed him wonderfully. “We worked really hard yesterday,” he said, reaching for a wrap. “Magic and fighting. How's Lizenne, and is Shiro okay?”

Zaianne sat down across from him and began pouring tea into four more glasses; the siren scent of the food was working its own sort of magic on the pile of Paladins, and there was a soft chorus of grunts and groans as they came awake. “Lizenne is fine,” she informed him, “Modhri knew exactly what to do to settle her down. I believe that she's still in the envirodeck, getting the last of Haggar's lab out of her system. As for Shiro... well, he's still in a bucket and his body is still under construction. I had a look at the system an hour or two ago, and it seemed to be making progress.”

“That's great!” Lance said with a huge yawn, reaching over for a glass of tea; he looked no better than Keith felt. “Can we go and see it, too?”

Zaianne handed him a wrap. “Eat first, and then get cleaned up. That body will heal no faster for your watching it, and Lizenne has asked me to tell you—all of you—that you are absolutely forbidden from trying to hurry things along, and that she will pickle the first little idiot who so much as thinks of trying. As your mother and adoptive aunt, children, I agree entirely with that, and will fetch her the extra vinegar if you try to sneak past us. Are we clear?”

“As crystal,” Allura said, sipping at her glass. “I had a cousin who lost his right arm in an accident, once, and had to have it regrown. His wife was a lovely woman and as sweet as she could be, but she lacked good sense when she was upset. She fiddled with the controls of the medical equipment while the doctors weren't looking, trying to make it heal him twice as fast, and the poor machine made a mistake.”

Pidge snorted in amusement. “Let me guess—the hand was a foot, or an extra head?”

Allura wrinkled her nose. “No, nothing quite that odd. He wound up with a double elbow, and an extra hand and forearm. Two arms, but three hands. All quite functional, and he kept it that way, just so that he could make all manner of bad jokes about it. It was very useful in his work and he even became a skilled musician, but he had to get all of his shirts specially tailored.”

Zaianne chuckled. “And what did his wife think of it?”

Allura smiled. “She opted to have that same procedure done on her own left arm, to balance him out, she said. Both of them gave the very best hugs after that.”

“Best use for them,” Hunk said, giving his team a squeeze to demonstrate. “Thanks for the food, Zaianne. Will you ask Lizenne if we can visit when we're done here?”

Zaianne nodded. “Certainly.”

 

And so it was a little time later that they were standing in the _Chimera's_ lab, staring in amazement at the progress that had been made while they were sleeping. The original parts had lost their claylike pallor, and a fine lattice of new tissues had formed between them. It was filmy and vague yet, but they could see where the bones, veins, organs, and muscles were going to be. Most important of all was what the heart was doing.

“It's beating!” Pidge exclaimed, staring in wonder at the busy organ as it pumped away.

“Oh, yes, and that's a very good sign,” Lizenne said, glancing at them with a smile. She was currently studying the body's progress on a large wall screen, and apparently was finding it fascinating. “The liver and brain are ticking right along as well, and the eyes and nerve trunk took no damage from all of that rough handling. The arm's doing its part, too, warming up the bone marrow and flushing out the veins. Shiro was young and healthy before Haggar got her hands on him, and his body wants to live. You shouldn't have too much trouble moving him out of his bucket and back into his rightful place, Lance.”

Lance jerked back in sudden panic. “Wait, what? Me? Move him?”

“You,” Lizenne replied, suddenly very serious. “You got him out of that Robeast. You moved him into a place of safety. You will bring him home. He'll trust your touch more than he'll trust mine. I expect that the poor man has had quite enough of being handled by aliens, and frankly, Lance, I simply don't have that ability. I can heal minor to middling-serious wounds and calm a troubled mind, but I cannot separate a soul from its body or repatriate it therein. I will help however I can, of course, but this is your job.”

“Oh,” Lance said, trying to process this dubious honor. “Um. Thanks? But it won't be for a while yet, right?”

She shook her head. “Not for another two, possibly three weeks, so you have time to nerve yourself up for it. After that, should everything go properly, he will probably drive us all mad.”

“Why's that?” Hunk asked.

She smirked and patted the tank. “Remember how fragile Modhri was, back when we were retrieving Pidge's family? Shiro will be alive and functional, but roughly ninety-eight percent of his muscle mass will be brand new, to say nothing of the sparkling-new bones and nerves. He will need extensive physical therapy to regain his strength and balance—he will have to relearn how to walk, how to coordinate hand with eye, and while he might remember his warrior training very well, his body won't. He will be terribly impatient and frustrated, and he will take it out on the rest of us.”

“I'll handle that part,” Modhri said from the doorway, a box of sample bottles in his hands. “I've been through the same process and can coach him. Am I allowed to swat him if he tries to overdo it?”

Keith grinned. “Sure. Watch out, he'll sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and try to train more than he should.”

Modhri nodded and took the box over to a refrigeration unit. “I'll warn Tilla and Soluk. They'll keep an eye on him after hours.”

The Paladins gave him a thumbs-up, one and all; there was no getting past the dragons. Allura sighed and turned her gaze back to the tank. “We'll have so much to tell him. So many adventures, so much discovery... he's missed an awful lot.”

“Yeah,” Lance said. “Tons. Fort Clarence, the pirates, all the people we've met, even those crazy doom moose and the Halidexans... and I've gotta wonder what he was up to, and why he left. I don't think that Black spat him out by mistake. He didn't, did he?”

Allura shrugged, her eyes worried. “I don't know. The Lion won't talk about it. I don't think that he did so in error—there was indeed some purpose to it. I just can't figure out what!”

“He'll be required to describe it in detail, never fear,” Lizenne said ominously. “In the meantime, he's already answered one or two that have been puzzling me ever since we met. Have a look at this, team. Especially you, Keith.”

She had pulled up what appeared to be a pair of spiral staircases on the screen, and they recognized the structures as DNA—a genetic lattice. They peered curiously at the images as they turned slowly to show all the component molecules, although the text pointing out certain sections was in Galran script. Pidge blinked. “You ran a gene sequence?”

“The cloning tank needed a sample as a blueprint, so that it could replace what was lost. I took a few cells to sequence more thoroughly. This one here is Shiro's--” she pointed at the lefthand helix, “--and the other one is Modhri's.”

Hunk squinted curiously at the two images and gave her a puzzled look. “They look pretty much the same.”

Lizenne nodded. “They do, don't they? Rather more alike than they should be. There are a few significant differences here, here, and here, largely dealing with things like organ function and placement, optical function, and growth rates. And, of course, the markers for purple fur, fangs, and claws. But this stretch—subtle, but very significant—might as well be a direct copy of yours. This is why you exist, Keith. Our peoples are related.”

“Related?” Keith asked, staring in stunned disbelief at the screen.

“Oh, yes,” she said musingly, magnifying those particular sections for a better look. “Very much so, and it looks to be deliberate.”

“Wait, wait, wait, so those loopy conspiracy theorists were right all along?” Hunk yelped. “We've got, like, a big bunch of weird people at home who've been saying that all the really advanced ancient civilizations were helped out by space aliens, and that there was some... y'know... interbreeding or manipulating going on, and that there are still some hanging around, only the government hushes it up all the time, and things like that.”

“They may not be entirely wrong.” Lizenne tapped on the controls again and frowned at the flood of script that resulted. “Whoever did this bit of work was very skilled. I can't tell which of our races was the donor or the recipient, or whether one or the other is simply an altered offshoot from a common ancestor, or even whose work it is. Some of the Elder Races did sign their work, but not all of them. All I can say is that it was done a very long time ago, and we're not alone in this sort of thing. Several of the Elders enjoyed this sort of meddling, whether it was to populate a deserted bit of cosmos or to perpetrate their idea of a joke, and there are something like three hundred or so known examples. At least there is some good news to be had from this. Congratulations, Keith, according to the calculations here, you have a good chance of enjoying a long and healthy life. You will very likely be able to sire cubs on females of either race, if you so choose, and your children will very likely be healthy and viable. Do not be surprised if you start manifesting more Galra traits as you mature.”

“Oh, hey, wow, will he get the purple fur?” Lance asked gleefully, grabbing handfuls of Keith's hair. “How about fangs or yellow eyes? Or pointy ears? He'd look good with pointy ears—ooof!”

Lance staggered away, clutching his middle where Keith's elbow had jabbed him. “Well?” Keith asked.

“I'm not absolutely sure yet,” Lizenne said, making a hand signal at Modhri, who nodded and disappeared into the back room. “But I soon will be. I want gene-samples from all of you, hair, blood, tissue, and epithelial cells, and right now. Modhri is fetching the kits as we speak, and you will provide! If you are my genetic kin, then you are truly of my pack, and as your aunt, I have a duty to protect you. Heroism is not a safe profession, children, and there is a very good chance that sooner or later, one or more of you will come home badly mangled. I do not _ever_ want to have to go to the same lengths as we have for Shiro, not ever again! Thus, if I must build you new body parts, I will insist on having the raw materials to hand. I already have samples from Modhri, Zaianne, Coran, myself, the dragons, and the mice on file. It's your turn.”

The five Paladins winced at her sharp tone, and knew that they didn't really have much of a choice. Moreover, she was right, and they sat quietly and allowed Modhri to help them provide the samples.

“Very good,” Lizenne told them in a gentler voice, tucking the precious kits away in a stasis box. “That will ease my mind more than a little. I'll keep an eye on things here. You might as well go and see if Nasty will teach you more about locks, or ask Coran to get in touch with Tchak so that you can play with that communications satellite that we stole.”

Pidge groaned. “Oh, crud! I forgot about them completely! Tchak's probably wondering what happened to us, and Kolivan's probably all mad that we vanished on him.”

“We were kind of busy,” Allura reminded her.

“Yeah, but now we're not, and he's still going to be annoyed,” Pidge retorted. “Come on, we'd better fill them in on what just happened, or he's going to give us the ninja stinkeye again.”

“And he's got a good one,” Hunk agreed, and then cast Lizenne a plaintive look. “So, what do we do with the Bucket of Shiro until the body's ready for him? I mean, is he aware of what's going on, or can he hear us, or what?”

Lizenne shrugged and sat down on a nearby chair. “I have no idea. It couldn't hurt to keep him in the middle of things. Talk to him, stay close to him, sing silly songs, whatever makes you feel better. It might indeed comfort him to have you nearby, and even if he is completely isolated in there... well, the effort will do you all some good, at least.”

 

They took her advice to heart, and the Bucket of Shiro was soon moved to the table in the Castle's main lounge. That particular room had become the main hangout of the Castle's population over time, and the Bucket was rarely alone in there. Not long after its arrival, a small sketch of Shiro's smiling face had been taped to the canister; it was quite good, although nobody would own up to having drawn it, and it did help make it seem more like a person in potentia than a large jar of glowing lemonade. Keith spent a large portion of his time in that room keeping Shiro company; everyone did. Pidge had made it a habit to give the Bucket a daily report of her activities, Hunk and Lance told it bad jokes, Coran had a seemingly infinite supply of dubious tales to tell, and Nasty's were even more obviously embroidered. Modhri, Zaianne, and Lizenne always greeted the Bucket politely when they came into the room, and even the dragons had been caught gronking quietly at it. So had the mice, oddly enough, and it was weird to listen to them carrying on their squeaky little conversations with it. Everyone checked on the body's progress at least once every day. That, at least, was improving steadily, and Keith himself had watched in fascination for over an hour as a mere pale suggestion of tissue in the tank had grown into a half-inch of ligament. There was real color in the face now, if not animation, which made it look as though it were dreaming. This was a big improvement over looking dead, and Keith found that very comforting. As for what was in the Bucket... well, they checked on that every morning, too, and every morning they found him unchanged. Still battered and bruised, but peacefully asleep, and nothing they did could wake him. There was nothing that they could do but wait until the body was ready for him.

In the meantime, they were all being kept busy. Zaianne was determined to keep their spirits up through rigorous weapons training, or at least to wear them out to the point where they simply didn't have enough energy left to fret. When she wasn't chasing them around the training deck, Nasty was showing them the finer points of basic villainy. They had the time, for the moment, anyway. The communications hub that their allies had stolen had apparently been worth a great deal to the Governor of Dinvashko, and he had people out looking for it. Lots of people, including not only the military, but bounty hunters and the Ghamparva as well. Unwilling to take on those monsters, Tchak and the others had been forced to move the thing around almost constantly since its capture. They'd finally found a hiding place for it in the middle of an asteroid swarm, but it was such a distant and risky location that Zaianne was being very careful about approaching it.

“Splat in the middle of Gantarash territory,” She told Hunk with some distaste. “There's an old ship's graveyard there, where the Gantars used to dump the starcraft they'd taken after devouring the crews. It's too close to the ruin of their homeworld for them to feel comfortable about hanging around there, but you never know.”

Hunk scratched at his chin thoughtfully. “Well, if everyone's willing to keep a lookout and fetch old ship parts for me and Pidge, we should be able to finish the job. Your boss really wants that comm station up, running, and on our side.”

“ _We can do that for you, if only to please the old cloak-and-dagger artist,”_ Tchak chuckled from a side screen. _“To tell you the truth, Hunk, we need it. All of the major communications relay stations in the Empire are Galra-owned and operated, and they're getting better at detecting and tracing subversive groups—y'know, like us—through our message channels. Their code-crackers are way too good for comfort, too. We could really use a way to connect with each other without having to worry about the enemy listening in.”_

“We'll see what we can do,” Hunk promised, and soon afterward was heading up to the lounge to look for Pidge.

It was going to be a big project, and a fun one, even with the threat of having to deal with the Gantarash, he thought as as he ambled down the hall to the lifts. Pidge had described Captain Plosser's disgusting pet in great detail, but even that didn't make him any less eager to dig his hands into a whole trove of defunct starship parts again. The comm-hub station wasn't anything like as big as Clarence was, but it had never been intended to do anything but hang about in orbit and relay data. He'd have to install a whole new drive section and probably a backup power core, too, and probably some guns. Plus, if Pidge could bat her eyelashes at Kolivan in just the right way... maybe, just _maybe_ he'd let them have a little peek at the space-bending technology they had. Bending space! Pidge's cloak of invisibility was good, but hiding around a dimensional corner was even better. Then again, that system probably gobbled power like black holes gulped down matter. Good for a stationary orbital base with really good solar-collection systems maybe, but not so good for anything that needed to move and keep moving. _What kind of power core,_ he wondered _, could produce enough oomph to make a base do both, and could those technologies be, y'know, made a little more energy-efficient?_

It was definitely something to discuss with his fellow Technomage, but he found her already embroiled in a heated discussion when he got down to the lounge. Soluk was sitting near the doors with the mice perched on his head, watching with amused glints in his six azure eyes as Pidge wrangled angrily with Nasty near the table.

“I never did!” She was snarling at the grinning Unilu. “I was never even anywhere _near_ that planet, and if there were any outfits like hers on the _Quandary,_ it wasn't me wearing them!”

Nasty cackled, waving a few small cardlike objects at her. “Oh yeah? The recorder doesn't lie, Varda.”

Pidge glanced at those, squawked in outrage, and grabbed wildly for them. “It does if you've got Photoshop, you _theko makt'ploshp!_ Hold still so I can—oh, hi, Hunk.”

“Dare I ask?” Hunk asked, leaning on Soluk's foreleg while the mice giggled above him.

She shot a fulminating glare at her pirate friend, then snatched the cards out of his hand and ripped them up. “Nasty's been telling Shiro a bunch of barrel-thumping whoppers again. Don't believe a word he says, Hunk, I was never anyone's harem girl.”

Hunk snorted in amusement. “Nah, that was Allura. Helenva showed me the picture Modhri took. Not that you wouldn't look good in that sort of wardrobe, but it isn't your thing.”

Nasty let out a hoot of laughter at Pidge's sudden, blushing confusion. “That's right! No room to hide a logic probe among those silks, unless she carries her tools in her—aargh!”

This time, Pidge had managed to get a grip on Nasty's collar and was doing her very best to pop his head off. Hunk glanced up at Soluk, who was watching this with all evidence of enjoyment. “They've been like this all morning, haven't they?”

Soluk bobbed his head gently with a grunt of affirmation.

Hunk sighed. “Yeah, it's been a stressful week. Tell you what, I'll go and get—oh, hi, Lizenne. Is everything okay?”

“Just about,” Lizenne said, taking in the scene with a smile. “Things are progressing very nicely, and I plan to celebrate Shiro's return to the land of the living with a hunt in the envirodeck. I've got a nice buck yulpadi fattening up down there, and a hard run through the grasses will do us good, to say nothing of the feast at the end of the hunt, of course. Keith's already expressed an interest in joining in. Would any of you like to come along?”

Hunk considered that. Yulpadi stew was great stuff, people would come back from the dead for another bowl of it, but he remembered the incredibly long legs that those animals had, particularly when compared to his own, rather stumpy set. “I dunno... will we have to chase it?”

Lizenne smiled. “Only a little. Yulpadis are the fastest of all of Zampedri's prairie animals, and there are very few creatures that can keep up with them. The dragons catch theirs through teamwork, much like how we took down the ornipal last time—the younger and sillier pack members drive the prey toward the older and stronger ones who are lying hidden in the grasses. In our case, we might well have the honor of making the kill ourselves, if we are skilled with the bola-whip, and have a bit of luck. Do any of you know how to use one?”

Nasty pried himself loose from Pidge's grip and took a careful step away from her. “Nope, but not for lack of trying. I just don't have the knack. I'll cheer you on, but I'll have to sit this one out.”

“A little,” Pidge said, straightening her glasses. “Matt and I used to play around with them when we were kids. Dad used to yell at us for stealing his lug nuts.”

“Never tried it, but I'm willing to learn,” Hunk said, thinking long thoughts about a hot bowl of stew. “Might come in handy later, if we need to catch someone without hurting him. Yeah, count me in, especially if those berry bushes are fruiting again. I've got this great idea for an ice-cream recipe.”

Hunk's experiments with ice cream had been wildly popular with the population of both ships, the mice and dragons included. Pidge and Nasty brightened up immediately. “Oooh, me too!” Pidge said with an eager smile. “Are the little square blue ones with the yellow spots ripe yet?”

Lizenne nodded, smiling fondly at her adoptive niece. “Not quite, but by the time that we hunt, the quillop thicket should be just about prime for picking. We'll check up on them a day or two beforehand; you and the others will want to brush up on your bola skills anyway, and the envirodeck is the best place to do it. I'll need to get you fitted for hunting leathers as well, as the grasses will tear your regular clothes to shreds. In any case, Nasty, I will also need my hunting knife back.”

Nasty's face crumpled up into a scowl, and a pair of hands clutched at a particular hilt possessively. “You gave it to me,” he protested.

Lizenne cocked a stern glance at him. “I let you borrow it. That means that you have to give it back.”

“You never said _when_ I'd have to give it back,” Nasty said, backing away from the Galra woman. “Come on, you won't need it until that hunt you're planning, and that'll be, what, a couple weeks from now?”

Lizenne held out a long arm, clawed fingers beckoning. “By then, you will have found an excuse to steal it. I know your kind, Nasty. I do try not to be a bullying tyrant, but there are times when the temptation becomes too much to resist. You do not want to experience one of those times. The knife, if you would.”

Hunk heard a faint rumble from Soluk under Nasty's spluttered excuses, and watched as the two largest mice scampered down the dragon's armored back and out of the room. He didn't say anything, though; Lizenne had that look in her eye that she often got during training sessions, and he'd never seen her face off against the agile little Unilu without a weapon to hand. This was going to be interesting—the fact that Pidge had her handcomp out and was recording the drama already was sure proof of that.

“The knife, Nasty,” Lizenne said, her voice gaining a steely tone that would have wilted a lesser fighter. “If I have to, I will summon it, and it will come. It will hurt you, if necessary, in order to return to its rightful owner. I would prefer not to make extra work for Lance.”

Nasty bared his teeth at her and backed a little further away. “You're gonna have to take it from me, lady. Once my hand's on a knife, it's mine!”

Hunk heard a faint gasp behind him, and turned his head to see Allura, Lance, and Keith frozen in alarm in the doorway. Quickly, he lifted a finger to his lips, warning them not to interfere.

“Is that so?” Lizenne asked lightly, her own faint smile turning fierce. “Then I shall do that thing. Thus--”

Lizenne took a swift step forward; Nasty reacted instantly, jerking two small knives and the big, heavy tambok fang out of his belt and thrusting them at her leg, going for the big tendons above the knee. She vanished mid-stride before the blades could touch her, and all five Paladins turned their heads instinctively, sensing where she would come out. Nasty had no such ability; Lizenne reappeared to his right, and a quick purple-furred hand smacked him sharply across the back of his upper-left wrist, sending the knife spinning across the room. Nasty whirled, jabbed again, but she was already gone. A half-second later, she was behind and to the left, and not only had the second knife been removed from his hand, but she'd stolen his bandanna as well. Nasty yelped in outrage as his cornsilk hair fell into his eyes, blinding him for just long enough; in a supremely graceful motion, she lunged forward, hooked a hand behind his knee and flipped him into the air, vanished, and then popped out again behind him at just the right angle to catch him by both ankles on the way down.

“My people, alas, have made a habit of shaking down their neighbors for the good stuff,” Lizenne said calmly, shaking the Unilu vigorously up and down so that his lesser knives and various small treasures clattered to the floor. “It's a delicate art, to tell the truth; one should shake hard enough to empty the pockets, but not so hard as to shake eyeballs and teeth loose as well, such things being unsanitary. Patience is also a virtue, and after ten thousand years or so, we've become rather good at it. One should develop a discerning eye, of course, and keep one's priorities firmly in mind. The knife, Nasty. Drop it, and I'll let you keep the rest.”

Hunk wasn't sure which was louder—Nasty's garbled curses or his and his team's smothered laughter. Lance managed to choke back his mirth enough to speak, but in a bad imitation of a popular German nature documentary narrator: “Here ve zee a life and death strrruggle between the common miscreant and a huge bull space chinchilla...”

Lizenne paused in her shakedown, and both she and Nasty gave him an offended glare. Undaunted by their dirty looks and encouraged by the amusement of his peers, Lance continued: “In ze harrrd and unrelenting vorld of nature ze ceaseless strrruggle for survival continues. Zis pattern of aggrrressive behavior is typical of both species, as zey are often in bitter competition for ze same rrresource—the edged veapon. See how the miscreant strrruggles to hold onto a prime example, even as ze space chinchilla attempts to separrrate it from his death-grip. Poor miscreant! Zese struggles can last for as much as three hours, often culminating in bouts of strrrip poker and spin-ze-bottle...”

“Those had better not be what I think they are, pal,” Nasty said in a dangerous tone.

Lizenne let go of one ankle and plucked the knife from his hands. “They're party games,” she said, dropping him on his head. “Both of the sort that are played when all of the bottles in the house have been emptied. Very funny, Lance.”

Lance grinned unrepentantly, and his team was hooting with mirth. It didn't get much better than this, in his opinion. “Yeah, I thought so.”

“I'll bet you do, Blue Boy,” Nasty growled, sorting out his limbs and grabbing up his scattered possessions. “You just wait until your next burglary practice session, and we'll see who comes out of that one laughing.”

“I never bet on a sure thing,” Lance said loftily, stepping aside and waving a hand at something behind him. “Anyway, Tilla found something a lot more worthy of your time, Teach.”

Nasty shoved the last few items back into his pockets and tied his bandanna back over his hair before deigning to look. When he did, however, his eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. Placed on the floor directly in front of Tilla's huge clawed paws was a generous soup tureen cast in solid silver, polished bright as a mirror and carved with a rather beautiful flowing design. Sitting beside it were Platt and Plachu, squeaking and waving merrily. Nasty vented a loud squawk and scrambled madly for this treasure, but Tilla was faster, snatching it up and dashing away.

“ _Foul!”_ Nasty howled furiously, rushing after her.

Lizenne watched them go, flipping the knife idly a few times before slipping it into an ornipal-leather sheath, and then dropped down onto the nearby couch. “All right, Lance. Dare I ask what a chinchilla is?”

There was something about her expression that promised a more energetic training session than usual later if she didn't like the answer. “Um,” he said, and proceeded cautiously. “They're an animal from Earth. A sort of large rodent, very soft and fluffy... and cute... and... um, they like hay and fruit... and they make good pets. Please don't kill me.”

She'd been slapping the hilt of her knife into her palm as he dug himself ever deeper into the pit, and her smile was no less sharp than the blade. “A prey animal?”

Lance deflated. “If you happen to be an Andean hawk, yeah.”

“A word of advice, Lance; never refer to a large predator as a prey animal unless you can prove that claim. Particularly not where she can hear you. I might as well refer to you as a raging carrot, or a truffle in trousers.”

Pidge snickered. “'Chopped liver' is the traditional term where we come from. Or 'chicken', that's pretty good, but 'ass' is more fun to say.”

Allura smiled. “Mother used to call me a silly viblett when I was very little, if I was acting up, and my cousins would call me a gworth until I chased after them, roaring like one. None of these pack the same punch, I suppose, since we're not dedicated predators.”

Lizenne relented, her expression softening. “No, they don't. Nor do your societies preserve pack behavior quite as faithfully as mine does. Still, it does one good to exercise caution.”

“Yeah, mostly so people don't bite your head off,” Lance said, glad to be let off the hook. “Literally, out here. I mean, I've seen some guys--”

“Hey, what's that?” Keith said suddenly, hurrying over to examine the canister on the table. He'd been watching it out of habit, and had noticed something strange. “Shiro's... doing something.”

The golden fluid in the canister was glimmering with blue-violet sparks, and everyone crowded around to examine it. Soluk leaned in over Pidge's head and sniffed delicately at the jar, then sneezed and giggled girlishly.

“He's aware,” Lizenne said. “Finally. He can feel us, and knows that he is safe and among family. I was starting to wonder when he would wake up.”

Keith let out an explosive breath of relief, but it was not in Lance's nature to rejoice quietly. “He is? He can? Can he hear us?” Lance didn't wait for an answer, but grabbed at the Bucket with both hands. “Don't worry, buddy, we'll have you out of there soon, and back into a real body so you can try out all of Hunk's new recipes, and fly the Lion, and save the universe, and—and—and everything!”

Pidge shoved him aside so that she could lay hands on the Bucket as well. “And you've gotta meet Yantilee and Ronok and Tchak and everybody, even the Doom Moose! Oh, crud, he'll have to meet the Doom Moose.”

Keith pushed his way through the press to make his own claim. “Forget the Doom Moose, he's gotta meet Mom, and check out what the Blades have been up to, and learn how to fight magic with magic!”

Hunk wasn't about to be outdone. “Yeah, and maybe we can take him back to Omorog so Loliqua can tell his future, and meet Clarence, and help Allura sweet-talk people into joining the Alliance!”

Allura dove into the press, too, not to make a claim, but to rescue the Bucket. “Calm down! You're going to spill him!” she said, catching the canister before it could hit the floor. The fluid within was sloshing energetically, and the blue-purple glints were flashing like stars.

Lizenne leaned back against the seat cushions, feeling the auras of the team interact in a wild blare of colors in her mind's eye, and through them she could perceive the interest of the Lions as well. As for the Bucket of Shiro, well, there was joy in that jar as well as pain, and she knew that he would not fight them too much when it was time to reintegrate soul with body. She glanced up at Soluk, who winked at her, and nodded. The witch smiled and murmured the short cantrip that sent a brisk, grass-scented breeze through every mind in the room.

Hunk heaved a huge sigh of relief. “Thanks.”

Lizenne waved a hand in acknowledgment. “Perhaps tomorrow after practice, I'll teach you all how to do that. Passion's good, but it can easily blind you. Calm is better.”

Keith gazed at the blue-glinting Bucket cradled in Allura's arms. “Yeah. Patience yields focus.”

There was an extra sparkle of blue-violet in the jar, as if the one within it could hear him, and agree.

 

“Wow,” Hunk said a day later, gazing at the scene in the bridge screens. “Those guys have some big appetites.”

“Don't remind me,” Pidge said with a grimace of distaste, “and I just had to deal with a damaged one. Anything we meet out here will be smart.”

Gantarash were not shy about their dietary preferences, nor were they picky eaters. There were hundreds of derelict ships, most of them largely intact, drifting in orbit around the burned and shattered sphere of a smallish planet. All of them showed the same patterns of damage, which struck Hunk as frighteningly effective. The Gantars had gone straight for the drive sections and steering systems, aiming to do as little damage as possible in order to take the majority of the crew alive. Every major defense system had been slagged over with surgical precision, and every airlock had been neatly forced with something very much like the Hatchcrackers. There were numerous Galra ships among the floating debris, he couldn't help but notice, and not small ones, either.

“The Gantars will attack the largest ships in any Galra fleet they run across, although they like the heavy cruisers and destroyers the best,” Modhri murmured, his expression grim. “Ships that they can take without too much risk, and yet hold the most live crew. Any prisoners held aboard those craft were considered a bonus. The garnish on the roast, if you will.”

“Ew,” Hunk said.

Pidge wrapped an arm around Modhri's waist and squeezed gently. “I still think that you were smart not to risk fighting them. How big a fleet was it that you ran into?”

Modhri grunted in disgust. “A whole ship-clan. Twenty _Gzak'nik'nik_ -class corsairs at least, all looking for feast meat. And I, the reluctant commander of a single, elderly, and patched-together warship, had no interest in accommodating them. I may be proud that I saved seven hundred lives by running away, but very nearly at the cost of my own.”

“There wasn't anybody nearby who you could call for help, huh?” Hunk asked.

Modhri sighed. “No. The Garrison Fleet that I'd been assigned to had been called away from their post. One of Zarkon's Generals... old Claxorn, I believe, was trying to curry favor with the Emperor by putting down an uprising with extreme prejudice, and he stole most of my Fleet to do it with. There was only a skeleton crew left to mind an area that was three times too large for it, and the Gantars had noticed. They came in swarms, and it was all that we could do to keep them from stripping the six colonies under our care of inhabitants. Despite this, I was accused of cowardice, and disposed of.”

Zaianne humphed from the pilot's dais. “I asked the Order to have a look into that. Kolanth tells me that Lieutenant Narash wanted your job, Modhri. You were too lenient with the local slave races for his taste, and so brought you to the Emperor's attention just when Zarkon was looking to make an example of someone. Office politics.”

Modhri muttered a curse under his breath. “That vicious-tempered, backstabbing little _kespek_. I hope that he did not enjoy his post for long.”

Zaianne flashed him a dry smile. “Eighteen days after he was rid of you, he ran afoul of the same fleet that you avoided, and failed to emulate your good sense. Feast meat indeed, and his skull was later recovered from the bilges of the Gantarash flagship.”

Modhri smiled. “Apt.”

“Ew,” Pidge said.

“Can't take chances around cannibals,” Coran said knowledgeably, steering the Castle around a tumbling freighter. “Devious sorts at best and absolute savages at worst, and unsanitary to boot. Terribly messy, your basic Gantar. Oh, yes, we had to deal with the nasty things back in Alfor's day, all right, and I can't say which was worse—having to clean out an infestation, or having to clean up after cleaning out an infestation. Bones and things everywhere, dirty dishes, piles of bloodstained rags, the occasional terrified survivor, and the smell! Filthy, absolutely filthy. Even going through the scavenged loot was depressing. Too much like grave robbing, that. I shan't even mention the sanitary facilities, because there weren't any. We generally had to burn the encampments down, and their ships were worse. Usually wound up burning those down, too.”

“They haven't changed much,” Zaianne commented. “They've stolen enough of everyone else's starship and weapons technology to make themselves into a real threat, but that's about it. Sensible people prefer to stay away from their known haunts.”

He cocked her an amused look. “And what does that make us, Madame?”

“Freethinkers,” she replied promptly. “Ah. I see the beacon. We're almost there.”

There was a dim red light pulsing among the masses of wreckage, very like a distress beacon on its last dregs of power, and Coran smoothly adjusted their course to follow it. “Might want to go and put on your armor,” he suggested to the two Paladins on the bridge, “gather up your tools and all that. This is a pretty good hiding place, but it's not a good idea to hang about for too long. There are quite a lot of people looking for that station, and should they show up and make a fuss, it's likely that we'll have Gantarash showing up as well. I'm all for a bit of chaos now and again, confusion to the enemy and all that, but I'd prefer not to run the risk of winding up as part of a sandwich as well, if it's all the same to you.”

“We'll do our best,” Hunk promised, looking around at the surrounding drifts of dead ships with a discerning eye. There's a lot of good stuff out there. Huh. Where is everybody?”

“They're here, just hidden,” Zaianne replied absently. “Keeping watch and doing a bit of scavenging of their own. Many of these ships aren't made anymore, and it's impossible to get replacement parts for the ones still in use. You may have to fight Tepechwa in particular for some of those, you know; his smugglers do much of their business in antique starcraft.”

Pidge shrugged. “Maybe. Probably not. So long as we can find something to work with, we can pretty much upgrade as we go along. I just hope that there's a decent AI in one of those.”

Hunk nodded. “You'll have to be careful how you pick this one. She's going to be a super-spy, and those have to be pretty slick.”

Pidge patted him on the back. “Hunk, I spent six months hanging around with some of the slickest characters in space, and we're friends with a whole crowd of space ninjas. I know what they look like. We'll do okay.”

A few minutes later, they came to their destination. Tucked into a clear spot in the middle of a jumbled crowd of derelict starships was an incongruous construction; it was larger than many of the craft around it, a pleated, dark-purple bicone-shaped station whose warning brights showed the clear, pale-blue gleam of an enemy craft that had been cleansed of Haggar's taint. It had a certain stark grace despite its mundane purpose, although it had obviously never been intended to do any traveling beyond a steady orbit, or to do any fighting beyond shooting down small asteroids.

Pidge scratched at her chin and gazed thoughtfully at the stolen station, and then glanced up at Hunk. “How do you figure on doing this?” she asked. “With Clarence, he already had a stardrive built in, and tons of parts in the basement. This one's only got correction jets, and I'm not even sure if it has a basement.”

Hunk grinned at her. “I've got a cool idea. You know how you can turn a ship's guts into big tree roots, and then use those to strangle it?”

“Yeah?” Pidge replied cautiously.

“Those sort of remind me of the bindweed in the back garden at home. Mom's always yanking the stuff out of her squash vines.” Hunk paused a moment, feeling a little homesick. “But it also reminds me of Mr. Ho down the block, and he did trees. All sorts of trees, from those tiny little bonsai ones to full-sized fruit trees. Me and Lance used to sneak into his back lot all the time.”

She frowned at him. “Why?”

“Because he had the best grove of trees in the neighborhood. Just ten of them, five nut trees and five fruit trees, but all together they gave him something like eighteen different kinds of fruits and nuts.” Hunk puffed a sigh of longing. “Grafting. He'd grafted a whole bunch of things to other things, and he was really good at it, and he always had more of a harvest than he knew what to do with. He knew that we were stealing some of it, but he didn't mind too much.”

Pidge smiled, knowing where this was going. “Let me guess, your mom and Lance's mom brought him some of the pie?”

“Pies, muffins, tarts, jam, cookies, candied fruits and nuts, everything. Mr. Ho was the happiest man on the block.” Hunk smiled sadly. “I miss the old guy, and I'm pretty sure that he missed us when we went away to join Galaxy Garrison. But I was thinking that we could do like he was doing, and graft in a drive section and some better guns, and maybe some other things. I'm pretty sure I could do that, if Lance, Keith, and Allura can cut those parts out of some of these wrecks and bring them close enough.”

Pidge's amber eyes gleamed in eagerness. “That sounds way cool! We reconcile the control systems so that everything works right together, throw in a drive library and a decent ship's brain... oh, and my cloaking system. Gotta have that.”

“I'd like to come along and watch, if I may,” Modhri asked politely. “I've never actually seen you two in action, and I might even be able to offer a little advice. I spent most of my young adulthood looking after things like this.”

Hunk reached out and patted Modhri's shoulder. “Happy to have you along, pal. I keep forgetting that you're an engineer, too. You spend a lot of time doing other stuff.”

“I have many duties,” Modhri replied with quiet pride, “and I perform them well. To tell you the truth, I've been enjoying this adventure enormously, even with its fits, starts, and upsets. Lizenne and I have learned so much, have met so many fascinating people, and have achieved so much more than we could have ever hoped to do on our own. Today, I hope to see the place where my chosen profession meets my wife's inborn talents. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?”

“Getting Shiro put back in his body,” Pidge said firmly, “and yeah, I know, it'll take another week or two before we can do that, but it's coming.” She paused, swallowing hard, and her voice was sad when she spoke again. “I've missed him so much.”

“We all have,” Hunk said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “We'll make sure that everything goes right, though, and we'll get him back on his feet in triple time, and then we can go and do some real damage.”

Pidge giggled evilly. “Yeah. That's going to be so cool. He's going to get a kick out of some of our adventures. Like when we got kidnapped by Sendak and got to be dragons, and my pirate adventure, and you founding the first ticket arcade in Galra space.”

Hunk squeezed her gently. “Yeah. Hey, and we'll have a lot to teach him, too. What sort of superpower do you think he'll get? We all got one, so he gets one, too, I'll bet.”

Pidge frowned thoughtfully. “I don't know. It'll be fun figuring it out. Come on, let's go and get suited up. I want to go out and play with the big-kid toys.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucket of Shiro is happy to see you! ^_^ Send kudos and comments to show him love!


	12. Pieces of the Puzzle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, 100 kudos! *throws confetti* Thank you to everyone who comments or pushes that happy little heart button~! Have a chapter!

Chapter 12: Pieces of the Puzzle

 

A little time later, they were standing in the control room of the comm station, watching the screens with great interest while Modhri's hands danced over the control board, bringing up the floor plan and technical specifications for them. To tell the truth, it wasn't a terribly impressive structure on the inside; the bulk of the station itself was given over to the data and utility systems, and the rest of it was spartan at best. There was a small shuttle bay that was barely big enough for a two-person lander, one small storage room that did double duty as machine parts storage and a supply room for the staff, one maintenance station for the small troop of Sentries allotted to it, a bare, cramped little dormitory block that was barely suitable for the five live operators, an even less-comfortable barracks for the ten guards and five maintenance crewmen, and another middling-sized room that looked to have been used for several different purposes. It was obvious that all of the funding had gone into the part of the station that actually had real worth to its owners—the computer systems.

“My goodness,” Modhri murmured eventually, homing in on one particular file. “Well, that tells me why they want this thing back so badly. I wonder what the Governor of Dinvashko had to do to get these privileges.”

“What privileges?” Pidge asked.

“These channels,” Modhri said, indicating a short list that had popped up on one side of the screen. “The fact that this station handles them at all is significant. See here, this odd little symbol? Sigil of Office. The Governor was alerted instantly if any of these channels were in use, and he was even able to read the messages sent on them. Not many are permitted this.”

“Wow,” Hunk said. “Super secret channels, right?”

“Very much so,” Modhri replied, and lifted a finger to point out the odd little glyphs that preceded each channel designation. “See this symbol, like a broken star held in a fist? Emperor's private line. This one, the eye with two streaks below it is Haggar's. These here correspond to the highest-ranking military, governing, and industrial officials in the Empire, and this one... ah. Crossed rifles above a broken sword. Ghamparva. This is their Commander's own most secret line. Kolivan must have been positively dancing with joy to have obtained these.”

Pidge and Hunk tried to imagine the grim-faced Blade doing a happy dance, and then gave it up as a bad idea. “Nice,” Pidge said, thinking instead of the kind of mischief that one could get up to with the sort of information that such channels would carry. “How do you know all of these?”

Modhri chuckled. “I was an intern for a time in the Center, to build up a little credit as a maintenance technician before being assigned to a ship. That sort of thing is very common, and there are enough layers of odd, old technology in that station to make it a real education. Many ship's captains will insist on having at least one tech with that extra credit, simply because of that added experience, and the more experience that said tech has, the better his paycheck is. It benefits the Center as well, because those interns are doing a job that is absolutely essential, and yet it pays practically nothing and involves a lot of work that nobody else wants to do, work that can't be turned over to a robot or a slave. Nobody looks at the interns. They get everywhere, and are beneath the notice of the mighty. The fact that we can dip our fingers into just about any file at all in the databanks without being noticed seems to have escaped them entirely.”

Hunk snickered. “Cool. Nothing like administrative oversight, huh? They look right over your head and don't see anything they don't want to. Can we have a turn with that?”

“Of course,” he said graciously, stepping aside and letting them take the helm.

Hunk thumped down into one of the operator's seats and touched the local comm button. “Hey guys, can you hear me?”

“ _Loud and clear, Hunk,”_ Allura responded immediately, _“we're ready to start gathering in materials. What would you like first?”_

“Give us a minute to look around first,” Hunk replied. “Modhri wanted a peek at this thing's address book, and I'll tell you, it's a doozy. Stand by.”

He glanced across at Pidge, who was sitting on the edge of her seat—literally; the chair was far too large for her, and set too far back from the board for comfort. Still and all, she looked ready for anything. Extending a hand and a smile, he asked, “Shall we?”

She returned both his smile and the gesture, grasping his hand warmly. “Oh, heck yeah.”

They turned back to the screens, hands still linked, and opened their perceptions to the debris field beyond. It was so easy for them now, and they exulted in the unique sensations it brought them. They could perceive every last fragment of machinery in the junkyard, the active ships of their allies, the jewel-bright Lions. Through Pidge, Hunk could hear the chatter of their shipboard computers as they navigated through the drifting wrecks; through Hunk, Pidge knew every gear, motor, and pump of the ships themselves. They felt their twinned talents mesh together, and knew themselves to be capable of absolutely anything.  _Just like the exercises,_ Hunk thought, and felt Pidge agree.

“Need a better power core,” she muttered, casting about for a replacement. “Onboard one's too small.”

Hunk hummed and felt around, finding what he was looking for some distance away. “Got one. Doesn't need Quintessence to run, either. Guys, we're gonna need the core out of... uh. What sort of ship is that?”

Modhri slid into the next seat over, watching the indicator on the screen as it focused in on a large, rather lumpy brown ship. “Onk'Hapax precious-metals freighter. Good choice. Those can go for more than a year without needing to recharge. Show me where your desired parts are, you two, and I'll relay coordinates and cutting instructions to your team.”

“Gotcha,” Hunk said, superimposing dotted lines on the image, which Modhri dutifully transmitted to the black Lion. “Just be careful, Allura, that sort of core doesn't like sudden hard knocks.”

“ _On it,”_ Allura responded, and the Lion soared gracefully across the screens toward the freighter.

“Got a good stardrive,” Pidge said thoughtfully, “plenty of range and it's really fast. It's not a teludav system, but it'll do.”

Hunk zeroed in on her find, and humphed. “Navigation library's limited, and it's hinky. Big malfunction in the coordinate calculator. They must have gotten tossed out here by mistake. We'll have to replace that. Modhri?”

Modhri sniffed in mild disdain. “A MaxLight 9000 racing yacht from Kedrek. A rich man's toy, and was probably wasted on the fool who owned it, if he wasn't sensible enough to keep up with the maintenance. Keith, can you see it?”

“ _Yeah. Even busted up, it looks really fast. Which part do... oh, thanks. I can get that.”_

“There's a better library... there are a bunch of them,” Pidge said, and Modhri watched the indicator bounce around on the screens, highlighting several wrecks. “What's the best one, what's the best one... wow. I do not want to meet the Gantar that caught that one.”

“Except perhaps to send it a thank-you note,” Modhri replied, glaring at a rather ominous-looking ship. “Ghamparva command craft. You might as well take it, since they know all the best back routes and hiding places, and the Blades will delight in using that organization's equipment against them.”

“I'll bet,” Hunk said, remembering the tale that Nasty had told them during the raid on Haggar's lab. “It's got concealed guns that still look good, too, and so do the shields. Lance, that big black thing with the dark-purple stripes; think you can trim out those parts?”

“ _Sure,”_ Lance replied. _“It won't be much different from cutting patchwork pieces for one of my cousin Racquel's quilts. Oh, hey, if there's a dead guy in there, will you want that, too?”_

Modhri snorted a grim laugh. “There won't be any. Gantarash are very thorough, and in any case, I refuse to have one of those monsters aboard this craft, dead or alive.”

“Hear, hear!” Pidge agreed. “We'll leave that to the Hoshinthra, who are better at keeping that sort of thing bottled up anyway. Got some good utility hardware over there in that really big wreck, Hunk, and armor plate. We're going to need to make room for all this new equipment, and we can't stretch the station's hullplate too thin or micrometeorites will pock it full of holes.”

“ _I've got the power core, Hunk,”_ Allura said, her Lion coming into view, towing the neatly-excised section. _“Where do you want it?”_

“Just park it by the shuttle bay for now,” Hunk replied absently. “Yeah, you're right, Pidge, and... ooh, that is good armor. Nice plumbing, too, and three real kitchens, a decent infirmary, and a... is that a swimming pool? It's huge!”

Modhri let out a low, impressed whistle. “I know that ship. The Pingzweerp people have been close allies of the Empire from nearly the beginning, and have retained considerable privilege as a result. That's one of their greatest and most extravagant starcraft, the _Pride of Lennobiln Mahnta,_ and only four of that line were ever built. Half warship, half royal luxury liner; it plied the starlanes for sixty-seven aggressively hedonistic years, attacking pre-spaceflight planets and demanding huge tributes and levies of slaves before it vanished without a trace near the Churns of Niorolac, taking nearly half of the royal family and a generous slice of the noble class with it. Treasure hunters still search for it, lured by the mystery... and by the vast wealth that it carried.”

“ _Finders, keepers.”_ That was Tepechwa, sounding a bit irritable. _“You all can have the parts if you like, but we get the loot. Fair's fair, since the last couple targets you crazy people hit, you broke.”_

“ _Hey, now wait just a minute, pal,”_ Lance said truculently, _“all that breakage was necessary, and it was first-class breakage, too. You did just fine picking up the pieces, I happen to know, and--”_

“ _We'll divide up whatever we might find later,”_ Allura broke in sharply, _“and fairly. Our own war-chest is getting a little thin, I admit, but our allies are owed their fair share. I take it that you'll want this craft, Hunk?”_

“You betcha,” Hunk replied. “The armor, the plumbing, some of the utility stuff and support beams, the medical bay, and definitely one of those kitchens. Hmm. Kolivan, I know that you're out there somewhere. What would your guys say to having a hot tub to soak in after a hard day of doing spy stuff? No, wait, don't answer that, of course they do. Doing dirty work calls for a lot of scrubbing off afterward, right?”

A small window popped up on the screen, showing the Blade's dour features. _“You will make us soft, Paladin,”_ Kolivan admonished over a faint chorus of snickering in the background.

Pidge giggled. “You scrub my back, I'll scrub yours. You guys get a hot tub.”

There was a startled silence from the other end, and then a hoot of delighted laughter that was cut off abruptly when the connection broke. Modhri, who had seen Kolivan's expression at his warrior's reaction to her statement, cocked her an arch look. “Don't make promises that you don't intend to keep, love. Remember that you're only a little time away from becoming eligible for courtship by our standards, and they will remember your words.”

It was Pidge's turn to blush furiously, and Hunk snickered. “We saw her first, Modhri, and she's fast and sneaky and scary when she wants to be. Found any good ship-brains yet, Pidge?”

“I—uh,” Pidge spluttered, still red around the ears, but she recovered well. “One, maybe.”

“Huh. Really?” Hunk asked. “Only one out of all of these ships?”

Pidge nodded. “Maybe not even that. Most of these ships are still pretty recent. I don't know if you've noticed this, but anything younger than Osric doesn't have much of a personality. Clarence was more than twice that old, and I'm willing to bet that nothing built after him was quite as good. I get the feeling that all the really good AI technology's been suppressed by the Empire for a long time now, to keep it from being used against them.”

Hunk frowned. “The _Chimera's_ pretty cool, when it has something to say. That ship's only, what, twelve years old or so?”

“The _Chimera_ has been listening to Lizenne,” Modhri said quietly. “She sings the old songs, the ones with power in them when she's busy with her projects, and she doesn't bother to set up wards when she attempts to scry out the future. The dragons do their own subtle work in the envirodeck as well, equally unconstrained. It's been soaking up magic, and has been developing opinions, which it and I have been discussing after hours. Hanifor AI's are quite flexible and have the capacity to point out possible outcomes that researchers might miss, but they aren't designed to be people in their own right. The poor thing was terribly confused until I explained aetheric science to it.”

“And it's okay with that?” Pidge asked.

“Oh, yes, especially after I told it of how you gave life to that little security drone.” Modhri smiled fondly at her. “It was very impressed, and has been running the probability math ever since. Being a science ship, it has no problem at all with being a part of an ongoing research project, and has been acting as the observer and recorder of our various stages of progression. It may even publish the results one day.”

“I'll want to see those,” Pidge said, resolving to have a talk with the Castle's stepsister ship, and soon.

“Me, too,” Hunk concurred, and looked up at the screens again, where the Lions were returning with their designated parts, and several ships were trying to maneuver the huge, awkward bulk of the _Pride_ a little closer without banging it into anything important. “So, where's that ship's brain you found?”

“Over... over there,” Pidge said, and the indicator jumped to a distant object that was so battered and torn that it looked more like one of the local asteroids than anything else. “It's old. _Really_ old, and I think it's broken.”

“We can fix it,” Hunk said calmly, and with such confidence that Pidge stared at him. “Things that are broken remember when they were whole. That's how healing works. I'll hold it steady and you grow it back together. Simple. Keith, stop playing 'chicken' with that pirate and go and get us that lump of stuff over... _there,_ would you?”

“ _Okay, okay, I'm on it,”_ Keith responded, growled _“watch it, pal,”_ at the impertinent corsair scout, and then the red Lion vanished into the wreckage.

When it it returned, it was pushing a raddled chunk of scrap that was only barely recognizable as a ship before it, but the sight of a faded, crater-pocked design printed on one still reasonably-flat surface made Modhri's breath hiss between his teeth and his eyes go very wide. “Ye gods. That insignia... I had thought that all of those were destroyed and recycled long ago.”

“Someone you know?” Hunk asked.

Modhri wasn't listening. “Lizenne, please scan the wreck that the red Lion is bringing us. Am I dreaming, or has a legend turned out to be real?”

A moment later, Lizenne's voice came through the comms, sounding just as surprised as he was.  _“You're not dreaming, and neither am I. That's a Dyrchoram reconnaissance ship, all right, and one that was configured for silent running. It was a top-of-the-line craft once, and I hope that its pilot took a great many Gantarash with her when she died.”_

“ _Who were the Dyrchoram?”_ Allura asked curiously, _“I don't recognize that name.”_

“ _Nor I,”_ Coran added, _“and I made a point of knowing who was who, back in the day. And who was what, too.”_

“You wouldn't know this one,” Modhri said, leaning back in his seat and gazing sadly at the ruined ship. “Nor would most. It was part of the agreement that the Galran Royal Houses never spoke of them to outsiders. Even the legends of them are very few and vague, and all but forgotten now. It was said that they were a very secret organization of Galra women, powerful witches all, who were sworn to protect the Royal Lineages of the First Colonies—Namtura, Kedrek, Korbex, Golraz, Palabek, and Simadht. They were fierce, dedicated, and very effective, although not infallible. A little like the Blade of Marmora, really. They met their end not long after Golraz was destroyed; Zarkon's vengeance against those involved in its destruction was severe enough for the remaining Royal Houses to order the Dyrchoram to attempt the assassination of both him and Haggar. The attempt failed, and Zarkon had them destroyed, along with their employers.”

“ _The Blade was founded on those legends,”_ Kolivan said quietly, and his deep voice held a betraying hint of awe. _“He who established the Order had stumbled across an ancient data cache, hidden on a dead world millennia before by the last surviving members of the Dyrchoram. It is in their memory that we take our stand against the tyranny of the Empire.”_

“ _All hail,”_ Lizenne murmured. _“By all means, resurrect that AI if you can; even though her data files will be considerably out of date, what she does have will be a priceless addition to our knowledge of history.”_

“We'll do our best,” Pidge promised.

 

Finally, with all the parts assembled and the other ships at a safe distance, Hunk and Pidge felt themselves ready to start. “Okay, Modhri,” Pidge said, frowning in concentration at the screens, “the station's got a small tractor beam over the shuttle bay, probably for loading stuff or keeping the doors clear. We'll be using that to bring in the parts as we need them, but its lateral range isn't very good. We're going to need you on the jets to turn the station around to where we can grab the parts, slow and easy. This thing might look like a spinning-top, but let's not take the similarity too far.”

“Not a problem,” Modhri replied. “Standing by.”

“Good. Hunk?”

“Yo.”

“Ready?”

He smiled at her. “Let's do this.”

This time when they opened their aetheric perceptions, they allowed their auras to lock fully, beginning that steady turning sensation that meant _balance._ The green and yellow Lions offered their strength, and that aid was accepted eagerly; they were at one with each other now, and when Hunk took control of the station's tractor beam, Pidge was right there with him, improving the focus of the diffuse reddish beam. The new power core was first; _gotta have the juice,_ Hunk thought, or perhaps Pidge thought it. At this point, such distinctions didn't really matter. What mattered was the job of parting the seams of the station, very gently, to allow the new core in and to reshape the machine deck around it. The station's original core, still half-charged with Quintessence, was reduced in size a little and fitted in as an emergency backup. The new one, a nice stable fusion engine— _better than Lizenne's old Saranto cluster-ship, believe me, that thing was way too kaboomey—_ just needed a little reaction mass to wake it up, and a little polish here and there to loosen up the regulatory systems. Spliced and sealed into the station's native power mains, it hummed gratefully to life.

_That's good,_ they thought.  _Drive next._

That part was a little tricky. The sleek racing yacht was a child of the same science and from a craft that was comparable in size, but the bad warp transition and the Gantarash's well-placed shots had caused a lot of damage. The station's lower levels had to be stretched out even further to accommodate the hardware, weakening the structural stability. _Not good,_ they thought, and turned to Modhri, visible only as a misty, man-shaped golden sheen nearby. That sheen might have seemed flimsy, but it was harder than titanium and slicker than teflon, and no communication of theirs could get through it. His ward, they realized, and so they alerted him to their needs by twitching a few pixels on the screen instead.

 

On the physical plane, Modhri had been watching the integration of core and drive with rapt fascination, so much so that he almost failed to notice the little icon appear on the screens, a rather amusing little caricature of Hunk. It was jumping up and down and waving its arms, pointing at the drifting heap of plating and structural members that had been stripped off of the _Pride of Lennobiln Mahnta._ Just out of tractor-beam range, he thought, and touched the controls gently. The station's jets fired, and he balanced them carefully as the station swung a stately half-pirouette. Hunk's avatar gave him a thumb's up, and then vanished in a puff of golden glitter. As he watched, the great thick structural beams, each as big around as a scout shuttle, were reshaped into a fascinating webwork of reinforcing members and melded firmly with the native hull. The last time that he'd seen structures like that was when he'd been helping Lizenne plant the young sintra bushes in the envirodeck's little marsh—it looked like a healthy root system. Pidge's influence, he knew, and felt a glow of pride in his adoptive niece and nephew as the huge sheets of salvaged hullplate arranged themselves over this webwork, melding together into one smooth, unbroken shell.

 

_Nice,_ the paired Paladins thought,  _drive library next, and the shields and guns. Gotta know where we're going if we want to get ahead, and it's a good idea to be ready for whatever's waiting there._

A few minutes later, they thought:  _Ew._

The Ghamparva command ship had been more of a mobile base than anything else, and even for a secretive military agency, the things that they had gotten up to had been vile. So much so that it had left a thin miasma of evil all over everything. Looking up at the red Lion, they spoke through the bond they had with its pilot.

_Keith, we're going to need you to clean that up for us._

Keith responded initially with a ruby flare of surprise at this unexpected contact, but answered a moment later in the same way. _Y... yeah, I see it. Hold on, let me just try something... I think that I can do this through Red._

The red Lion swooped in and carefully sank its teeth into a section of torn fuselage, and a second later the ship was engulfed in scarlet-gold flame that burned a dark garnet at the edges. _Got it!_

The pair in the station checked the ship over and found it clean, sending their fellow Paladin a mental high-five before incorporating the best parts of that rare craft into their project.

_We're really going to have to do something about those guys later,_ they decided, and then turned their attention to better things. _All the mod cons,_ they thought with a certain amount of glee.

Both of them had come from backgrounds that were, if not luxurious, then at least comfortable, and began to make some important changes to the structure of the living quarters.

 

Modhri sat up straight and blinked in confusion as the room around him changed shape. He'd turned the station again at the prompting of a little caricature of Pidge that had popped up on the screen, and had watched with avid eyes as the other desirable portions of the old royal ship had vanished into the station's substance. As the station's command center, the control room was large and high-ceilinged, the better to increase the consequence of the operators. As he watched, the ceiling lowered itself slightly—or perhaps the floor was rising up—and the walls began to close in. It was all very smooth and the solid metal flowed like water to take up its new configuration, but it all happened in a complete silence that was more than a little unnerving. The room was down to two-thirds of its size before it stopped, and Modhri spun back around and called up the station's floor plan, and noticed that a whole new bank of controls had been added to the board. He fancied that the station, too, was quite surprised to find itself in possession of a whole new deck, with an expanded crew dorm, a decent-sized training room, a nice little kitchen area, an efficient storage chamber, and a bathing room that doubled as a laundry area. The promised hot tub was a little small, with only enough room for three or four bathers, five if they were very good friends, but there it was. He could even see the expanded water reservoir and filtration system being spliced in along the core of the station, where it would also do double duty as a backup fire-suppression system. As he watched, the new level expanded again to fit in a small but well-appointed medical bay, which the eventual crew would appreciate. Having seen the scars that decorated Zaianne's body and those of her colleagues, he knew full well that their profession was not a safe one. Below that new deck was an expanded shuttle bay, which would allow for three of the little scout ships that the Marmorans favored, or a single large fighter, and a separate freight elevator had been added to the lifts. He glanced at the two entranced paladins and noted a certain hollowness beneath their eyes, and murmured a quiet but urgent request to the Castle. Coran concurred, and set about fulfilling it. For the moment, he was content to wait and watch, and to be amazed at the rare talents being displayed here.

 

_Almost done,_ the Paladins thought, looking around for the last and most important piece. An alert in Modhri's direction had the station spinning ponderously to the left again, and the tractor beam reached out and caught the tiny, ancient ship. Keith hadn't wanted to cut that one up, unwilling to risk damaging anything in it. That was just as well, for all of it looked useful. There was good-quality metal in the hull that would go to further strengthen the station's skin; the ruined drive and power systems contained materials that would augment those already in place. Even the drive computer, comparatively primitive though it was, had a few elements that would be of benefit to them, and there was even...  _Oh, wow,_ the green and yellow Paladins thought in sudden shock,  _the station gets a dead guy anyway._

Floating ominously in a sealed cabin in the back of the ship was the unmistakable shape of a passenger. No, a pilot, they discovered; primitive though it was, the suit it wore was flight armor. Decent armor, but not quite decent enough to have stopped the bolt that had taken its wearer's life. _Might have ended it all before the Gantars caught up with her,_ one Paladin wondered.

_Find out what the AI knows about it,_ the other stated firmly.  _Help me with this, it's really badly fragmented._

That, it certainly was. Ten thousand long years, possibly more than that, of drifting around in an asteroid belt had not been kind to the ship or anything within it. Worse, the AI had not been shut down properly, as Clarence had been; it had been left active, to die by inches as the power core slowly ran out, and the failure of one system after another had disrupted the proper order of the logic blocs. That might have killed a modern AI, or at the very least would have driven it completely mad, but the comparatively simple structure of this ancient one had a lot of redundancy built into it. Those logic blocs might have been scattered all anyhow and some jerk had hit the housing over the data banks repeatedly with an axe, but the blocs themselves were pretty much intact. The slashed wiring and circuitry were no problem. The problem was getting the reassembly done right the first time.

_We got super lucky with Clarence,_ the paired Paladins realized as they drew the little ship in its entirety into the substance of the station. Almost as an afterthought, the substance of the ship was sectioned up and the materials sent to where they would do the most good, its electronics carried through the underlay of the hull to become part of a cloaking system that the dead pilot's colleagues would have killed for. The corpse itself was set aside for later. 

_Super, super lucky. We'll merge the old AI with the station's AI, that'll give her a big boost in computing power, and a lot more scope for thought and action. She'll need it just to deal with the comm system. Come on, sweetie, show us who you used to be..._

Hunk had been right about the habit of broken things to remember when they were whole. The clues were everywhere, like the distinctive edges of a shattered porcelain vase. If one knew what one was doing and could find all of the pieces, it was possible to put the vase back together so well that the casual observer might never know that it had been broken at all. This was quite different, being data rather than crockery, but the principle was the same. Hunk and Pidge together found ragged edges that exactly fit other ragged edges, and smoothed them back together into one cohesive whole.

 

Modhri had no idea what was going on now. The screens had fuzzed into static and then gone blank, although the life-support systems and the power core were still thrumming steadily along. There were some very odd noises coming from the data banks and the running lights were flashing in bizarre patterns, but nothing could have been stranger than watching a very ancient corpse rise up through the floorplates as though it had washed up on a beach. Unwilling to touch it, he had settled for speaking the ancient prayer for the solace of the unknown dead, and sat there studying the mummified face visible through the helmet's visor. A woman, he mused, and one who had been young when she had died, and possibly even beautiful. Oddly enough, she reminded him of someone that he knew, and would probably never see again.

Something under the control console went _blorp,_ followed by a mechanical mutter that sounded almost like swearing. The Blade standing nearby twitched nervously and backed away. The man had come aboard at Zaianne's insistence with a very important package; it was a measure of the respect that she commanded among those of her Order that a word from her could get any of them to even approach a structure that was changing shape from moment to moment. Modhri, who knew a thing or two about large, esoteric data systems and how they functioned, did not move even when the whole system went down and took the room's lights with it. “Five,” Modhri said in a commanding voice that startled another flinch out of the jittery Marmoran—poor man, he really hadn't taken the corpse's sudden appearance very well. “Four. Three. Two. One. Reboot.”

The lights came back on, and the data banks hummed into life, the running lights blinking golden and green. Modhri smiled at the rattled Blade, and the screens came alight again, showing system checks that all were coming up clean. On the screens, a pair of small, Paladin-shaped avatars mounted astride their respective Lions shared an epic high-five before vanishing, and the real Paladins grunted and groaned as they came awake. Modrhi motioned with one hand at the Blade, who stepped nervously forward with his precious cargo—a small hovercrate packed with snacks, and it was just as well that the man had excellent reflexes. Once the lid was off, both Hunk and Pidge attacked the beverage packets and the fragrant piles of lelosha wraps, fried paslen, sausages, and huge fistfuls of the crunchy, starchy, puffed sylth kernels that Hunk referred to as “popcorn”. If the Blade had not moved out of the way so quickly, either one of them might have bitten him.

“ _Modhri?”_ Lance's voice came through the comm, sounding a bit shaken. _“Modhri, are you there? How are they? That was a big effort.”_

Modhri eyed the two Paladins, who had already finished off the sausages and were halfway through the fried paslen. “I'm here, and they're fine. Just extraordinarily hungry. They'll probably want a bath and a nap, if they don't just curl up in their seats first. From what I can see, they succeeded; the AI is still running self-checks at the moment, but she should be up to speed soon. Oh, and we seem to have a dead person. I believe that the poor thing came in with the Dyrchoram craft.”

There was a hiss from Kolivan. _“If there is no room for her aboard the station, we will inter her with honors elsewhere. Corchax, will you bring her back with you, if such is the case?”_

“I will, sir,” the Blade said, although he didn't look too happy about that request, and he was giving Pidge and Hunk wary looks.

Modhri sympathized with his unease. Powerful magic was often frightening to those who had none and weren't used to seeing professionals at work. “Let the AI inform us as to who she was first,” he suggested, “I would like to know exactly how this warrior wound up in the middle of Gantarash space, alone and unrecovered.”

“ _Why should I do that?”_ a new voice snapped, making everyone jump. It was female, slightly tinny, and came from one of the PA speakers set high on one wall. _“Who are you, and why are we still here? If those double-damned bugs come back... oh! Zandrus!”_

Modhri looked up sharply, very surprised at the sound of that name. “Me?”

“ _Yes, you, you fluffy-eared idiot,”_ the voice that could only be from the AI said acidly, _“where have you been? It's been years! You made a promise, you know, and you're a bit late in keeping it. She left you a message, but didn't survive long after dictating it. She's in the... ye gods, where did all of these other rooms come from? I'm... bigger.”_

Modhri stood up slowly and turned to face the screens, his expression strained. “I am not Zandrus, my Lady, but that name is not common. It occurs only within my Lineage, where it is given to every tenth son of the Line descended from the original bearer. We have held ourselves close to the Ghurap'Han Lineage since his time in order to repay the debt, though it has cost us dearly over the years. May I see the face of my ancestor, and hear the words of his beloved?”

Pidge and Hunk, caught halfway through the last two lelosha wraps, stared at him with eyes like owls. “Modhri,” Pidge hissed, “what the heck--”

He silenced her with a sharp gesture. The AI responded slowly, _“Just how long has it been? These systems... they're beyond anything I've ever heard of. How long has it been?”_

Modhri's eyes closed, his face pinched with inherited pain. “Slightly more than ten thousand years. We have been paying for our ancestor's foolishness for a very long time. The image and the message, if you would, please.”

“ _Hold on, I need to verify that. A hundred years, maybe two or three I could believe, but ten millennia? Oh, we've got company..._ Tajvek. _That's the Castle of Lions. With the Lions. You came here with_ Voltron? _How in Kuphorosk's name did you manage_ that? _Zarkon wouldn't allow our lot anywhere near his favorite toys, he said that we would give them ideas! Or try to steal them, whichever came first. Not that we wouldn't, give us half a chance, but the Alteans had that support infrastructure all set up around it already, and our Commander couldn't get the funding for even a fraction of that. She wasn't about to get it either, not with all six Colonies, the Homeworld, and half of the known universe holding a stake in the thing. The politics alone would have gotten us all exiled or killed. Probably both.”_

“Ask the Lions,” Modhri said solemnly. “You know as well as I do that there is no fooling those great beasts.”

“ _Hah! Not for lack of trying, and not just on our part! All right, my lads, who is willing to tell me a shaggy-hacker story?”_

There was a long and uncomfortable pause that nobody quite dared to break. Everybody in the room, possibly including the corpse on the floor as well, was staring at Modhri now. He stood there as still as a statue, one hand resting on the back of his chair and his face sad.

“ _You're not lying,”_ the AI said eventually. “Keshpha _and_ Sercolax, _but you're actually not lying. Ten thousand years! And that arrogant, humorless, foul-tempered son of a_ quortch _has been on the Throne the whole time. I knew there was a reason why I never liked that Altean witch. All the same, he should have known that power of that nature comes at a steep price. It's the first lesson that all young practitioners learn!”_

“It used to be. Not any more. Nonetheless,” Modhri said sternly, “I ask again: the face of my ancestor, and the message that Tzairona Ghurap'Han left for him.”

The man's image that popped up on the screen a few seconds later looked very much like Modhri. The angle of the ears was a clear match, as was the square jaw, the thick fur, and the generous arc of the cheekbones. The man in the image was younger, however, and brash, with an adventurous glint in his eye that told them that this was a fellow prone to mischief. He had none of Modhri's character yet, nor did he have his descendant's calm and dignified demeanor, and something about Modhri's expression suggested that the man hadn't lived long enough to acquire those traits.

The woman who appeared in a side screen did not look like Lizenne. Oh, there were similarities; the rich lavender color of her hair, the strong bones of the face, and the proud stance even in dire distress. The eyes were the same, being that particular shade of topaz, but there was none of the wry humor of her modern-day relative there. What lived in those eyes now was sorrow, and a terrible determination.

“ _Zandrus,”_ she said in a voice made harsh with stress, and then her expression softened slightly, _“Beloved. If you are watching this, then I am dead. As you have doubtless noticed, the assassination attempt did not go as planned. Despite our precautions, Haggar managed to scry out what we were up to, and set up an ambush. None of our operatives were taken alive, but we were identified. All of our avenues of escape were blocked; I managed to make it to Terebrax before Zarkon's men caught up with me. They are the ones who ruined my ship, beloved, and then brought me out to this filthy backwater as feed for the Gantars. Jasca played dumb during our capture, and has kept me company while I tried to make repairs, bless her. Alas, there was nothing left to repair, and nothing left to repair it with. She will doubtless fill you in on the details. I expect that this foul-up has sealed our doom and that Commander Marmora has already given the order to scatter. Don't bother heading back to Headquarters, Zandrus. I would be very surprised if those two monsters allowed any of our traditional patrons to live after this. Yes, the Royal Families were in on that decision, and if the bloodbath hasn't started already, it soon will. I will charge you with this last duty, Zandrus Khael'Xor—as your beloved and the mother of your children, I forbid you from suicide. You may not die! You will take our cubs back to Grandmother's House and you will raise them well, even if it means swearing them into the service of Ghurap'Han for all time to pay for my loss. You will do what is honorable for once, you magnificent fool. It is time to grow up. I wish that I could soften this blow, but I have no choice but to do it this way. If you ever loved me, Zandrus, you will heed my words and do as I say. Our Line must not die. I have Seen it—the man of our descent who beholds my bones where they now lie will see Zarkon's defunct carcass as well. Know that I will love you forever, and I will wait for you if I have to dislocate Kuphorosk's shoulder to do it. Farewell.”_

The woman in the recording looked for a moment as though she had wanted to say more, her face full of pain and her eyes full of tears, but jerked her head to one side as if summoned, and there the message ended. Modhri heaved a shaking sigh and sat down heavily in the chair with his face in his hands. “She looks just like Lizenne's Aunt Korial,” Modhri observed in a thin voice. “Korial was the one adult out of that entire Lineage who didn't object to Lizenne's fondness for me, and who always had a treat for a good boy. Free. Ye gods, at long last, we are free.”

“ _It may take some doing to get my Matriarch to acknowledge that,”_ Lizenne said, sounding no less rattled than he did. _“My lot has profited off of your lot for far too long to let you go so easily. I vote that we drop our new colleague here through the roof of the House and let them take it up with her.”_

Modhri burst into weak laughter that was perilously close to tears. Hunk stood up and brushed crumbs off of his breastplate. “Um, care to tell us about it, Modhri?”

“ _Not now,”_ Tchak cut in sharply over Modhri's mirth, _“All of this stuff is great for a vid drama, but it's bad timing out here in real life. My long-scope maven has just told me that we've got company coming. She's spotted three Gantarash scouts—if we don't leave soon, we're going to be up to our eyebrows in big, red, stinky maneaters.”_

“ _Can't have that,”_ Coran said disapprovingly. _“Disgusting creatures, really. Frankly, I'd rather fight just about anyone else. Even bounty hunters--”_

There was a yelp of surprise from one of Tepechwa's scavengers as a large number midsized fighting craft suddenly appeared, guns hot and ready, and the screens began to light up with communications from all of them. The message, delivered in a cacophony of harsh voices, was rather muddled, a mixture of _“Surrender, criminals!”, “Stand down now or we open fire!”, “Submit to the might of--”, “Hand over the station and come quietly, or--”._ There were numerous other demands and threats, which soon devolved into a general argument with each other over who had the right to the bounty.

“Seriously?” Pidge grumbled, reaching for another beverage packet.

Coran humphed. _“Well, maybe not bounty hunters. Disorganized lot, in my opinion. At least the Imperial Military is--”_

Abruptly, the entire Dinvashko battlefleet showed up, raising shouts of protest from the bounty hunters. These were overridden by the stentorian snarl of their commander. _“Paladins of Voltron, you and your verminous associates are surrounded. You will surrender immediately and turn over the Lions and the comm-hub station, or we will take possession of both from your blasted and crumbling corpses!”_

One of the bolder bounty hunters made a rude noise. _“Scrod off, you furry brasshat. We got here first, the bounty's ours! It's right there in your own body of law—he who finds first, gets the goods!”_

“Seriously?” Hunk asked, picking the last bits of popcorn out of the lunchbox.

“ _The bounty goes to he who brings the target in,”_ the fleet commander said ominously, _“and that person is not necessarily the one who found the target. Stand down, scavenger, or you will be destroyed as well.”_

Coran sighed. _“Oh, all right, maybe not the military. Overbearing bunch. Still, there are others who--”_

At that point, a fleet of Ghamparva ships arrived; they were smaller than the other warships, but the sleek hulls and advanced weapons told anyone who cared to look that these could tackle the whole crowd assembled here without raising a sweat. _“Stand down, Commander,”_ the captain of the largest of the Ghamparva ships stated; the look in his eyes and tone of voice alone suggesting that he was accustomed to being obeyed instantly. _“This is our jurisdiction now. The station belongs to us, and these criminals and traitors are in league with the Blade of Marmora. Our duty is clear. You will return to Dinvashko immediately, and you will take this rabble of bottom-feeders with you.”_

This little speech did not have the desired effect. _“We will not!”_ the fleet commander growled right back. _“The Emperor's orders are just as clear as your duty._ All _ships of the Line are to keep watch for Voltron, and to attempt to take it for the Empire! I see three Lions right there in front of us as plain as day, and those do not come under your authority!”_

“ _Seriously?”_ they heard Allura, Keith, and Lance chorus.

“ _Oh, dear,”_ Coran said. _“I'd rather give that lot a miss, too. Perhaps fighting Gantarash would be--”_

Space suddenly glittered all around them as a swarm of large, dark-red ships popped into view, eliciting cries of alarm from everyone. A new window popped open on the screens, showing the bristly, fanged, eight-eyed and spiderish face of an adult Gantar.  _“Feast meat,”_ it rasped in a buzzing snarl,  _“we thank you for this generous gift of flesh.”_

“ _Coran?”_ Zaianne said sweetly.

“ _Yes, Madame?”_ Coran replied in a meek little voice.

“ _You can shut up now.”_

“ _Indeed, Madame.”_

The Gantars opened fire on everybody, causing quite a lot of chaos. Despite this, Modhri had dissolved into another fit of chortles, and he had to lean on the worried Blade for support. Pidge sighed. “Jasca?”

“ _Yes?”_ the station's AI responded.

“Please open a private line to every ship that isn't a bounty hunter, Imperial warship, Ghamparva, or Gantar and tell them to voip and bail. Also, tell them that First Mate Varda is telling them to move their butts. That means turn on the invisibility and get out of here fast, and then we need to do the same. We'll meet up with them at Hoynarylup's third moon. You should know where that is, now.”

“ _Yes, I do. How strange.”_ there was a momentary pause, and then Jasca humphed as a number of ships in the screens vanished. _“Well, that was easy. I've never seen such a diverse crowd moving so quickly. First Mate Varda must be a real authority figure.”_

Hunk grinned. “Kinda, yeah. It's a long story. Let's get out of here, Jasca.”

“ _Happy to,”_ the station's AI said cheerfully, observing the all-out space battle boiling up around them. All of the combatants seemed to have forgotten that they were there. _“It's almost a shame to miss the fun, though. What a glorious mess!”_

Jasca's recycled drive hummed into life, and a moment later had left the battle behind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We love Coran. He's such a glorious vector for chaos.


	13. Family Ties

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where I would normally put a clever comment to welcome you to the newest chapter. However, I have a cold and the only thing in my skull at this moment is dishwater jelly. Please enjoy the story, which is bound to be more entertaining than my fumbling attempts at humor.

Chapter 13: Family Ties

 

Haggar swayed dangerously on her feet and was forced to steady herself against the shoulder of Pendrash's favorite aide. To the man's credit, he neither flinched nor shrank from her touch. In truth, the young man had been running most of her errands over the last several days, simply because he lacked that fear... or at least was very good at suppressing it. That was just as well, and she could see why Pendrash valued the man; true self-control was rare these days, and she didn't have the patience to deal with a lesser man's jitters right now. He simply stood still, his face a polite blank until she had regained her balance, and then they continued on toward the ship's infirmary.

Inwardly, she was seething with annoyance at her own weakness. She should never have allowed Zarkon to empty her out like that, nor should she have allowed herself to pour out so much for him. Even now, even after so long, he still had that power over her. According to her timepiece, she had slept the clock around for the second time in a row, and she still felt like a mildewed dishtowel. Still, she had duties; her Lord had been wounded, and she needed to check up on him. Haggar stumbled again, muttered a curse under her breath, and growled, “Has my message been sent?”

“It was sent perhaps five minutes after you gave it to me,” Subaltern Kerraz replied evenly. “A Druid and a canister of Quintessence from your own private reserve is expected to arrive within an hour or two, Lady Haggar.”

Haggar humphed. “Good enough. That should be enough to get both of us back on our feet. Curse those Paladins! They should not have been able to pierce his armor.”

Kerraz forbore to comment, and got her into the infirmary without her falling over. Looking around, she saw Zarkon lying in a recovery cot, propped up against the cushions and looking surly. As well he might; the right arm and left leg were bound in bandages and immobilizers while an intravenous drip fed medicines into the wounds, and those standard-issue hospital gowns flattered nobody. “Why is he not in a healing pod?” Haggar snapped, making the two on-duty medics flinch.

“We've tried that, Lady Haggar,” one of them said nervously, “three times. It's taken care of the bruises, the abrasions, and the cracked jawbone and loosened teeth, but the wounds in the shoulder and thigh won't close... and something in the flesh is glowing. The usual methods we have for treating aetheric wounds are not working. It took us over an hour just to halt the bleeding completely.”

“Aetheric?” Haggar asked with an ominous frown.

“Yes, my Lady,” the second medic said eagerly, “most definitively so, and of a sort that I've never seen before. We have kept the wounds free of mundane infections, but the aetheric poisoning is actually acting as something more akin to that—very much like a bacterial infection. Nothing like your own methods, when you see fit to punish some fool. Quite fascinating, really. Here, I will show you!”

The medic bustled over to the bed, completely and unwisely ignoring the Emperor's irritated glare and unwrapping the dressing on the shoulder wound. It was fairly short but very deep, penetrating nearly to the bone, Haggar observed, and a thin, reddish gel was seeping from the wound. A stab, rather than a slice, and Zarkon grunted in discomfort when the medic displayed the gleaming filaments that had wound themselves through the muscle fibers.

“As you can see, it's attacking the muscles and tendons, rather than going after the veins,” the medic prattled on, “his own immune system has been boosted by the Quintessence he absorbed prior to the battle, which has kept it from spreading any further, but it is attempting to change the tissues at the molecular level, degrading them down into a sort of gel-like substance--”

Haggar shoved the man roughly aside and stepped over for a closer look. Pale strands of light, almost like filaments of raw silk, very dense within the wound itself, and showing faintly just under the skin around it. A memory twitched in the depths of her mind; she had seen this sort of thing once before, but only once, and it had been long ages ago. She hissed between her teeth and glanced up; her Lord was glowering at the fussing medic as though he were considering whether or not to display the corpse publicly, and in how many pieces.

“What happened?” she demanded.

Zarkon rumbled irritably, turning his pale gaze to meet her eyes. Even slightly blurred by the painkillers he'd been given, that gaze was as fierce and direct as ever, and his words were untouched by the slurring that such drugs often caused. “The Altean girl had a bone spear. A true one.”

Haggar went very still. She had encountered bone spears in the past, most of them no more than sham things, artifacts of witchery only. Those had been as easy to break and drain as their bearers. There had been one, however, just one that had been real. Its bearer had died at a touch, having been stricken beforehand by a disease that had not been curable in those days, but the spear itself...

The spear had continued to seek her blood, and had incorporated energies into itself that Haggar still did not like to contemplate, and had been extremely difficult to disperse. So much so that she had seen to the destruction of every last known person or record that had held the knowledge of how to make more. “That should not be possible.”

Zarkon's expression turned wry. “You have said that before. It is also not possible that someone should be able to draw the motivating element out of a Robeast intact, and yet we saw it happen. And some time ago, you made the same observation of a certain discipline of magic, lost since the Sisterhood War ended, and yet somehow resurrected nonetheless.”

Haggar ground her teeth. “Lizenne. Again! She dares!”

Zarkon smiled grimly. “Considering her record, how could she not?”

Haggar glared at him and tapped his broad chest with an admonishing finger. “And you, my Lord, facing the Altean girl down regardless, even though you knew that she was a Perfect Mirror. I told you that myself.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously. “I will not run from a threat. Any threat. I will either conquer it or die, and I will not die. I have learned from that fight, and would meet that challenge again.”

Haggar snorted, but laid her hand over the infected wound, feeling the strange forces that ate at his very substance. He was resisting it, even as the annoying medic had said, but the power he had taken from her and from the Quintessence canisters in his armor was nearly spent. It would run out very soon, leaving his healthy but ancient body fully vulnerable to the dire influence that the spear had planted in him. An hour or two was all that it would take for her Druid to arrive, but that was too long to wait. Unfortunately, she did not have the power on hand to mend the damage now. As it was, she could barely walk without falling over her own feet--

“Would you care to describe the infection from your own experienced viewpoint, Lady Haggar?” the foolish medic said suddenly, derailing her train of thought. “I have been making a study of such things when and as these cases have become available. How would you compare this example with your own, and what would you suggest as a cure?”

Haggar whirled and siezed the man by the throat. She had become complacent in the last thousand or so years, she thought, and had almost forgotten that there were plenty of sources of what she needed the most, walking around everywhere she looked. More than were needed, to tell the truth, and it was high time that she demonstrated that. This one was young and full of the juices of life, and would do nicely. “You wish to see a cure?” she purred, “you will do better than to see it. You will be part of it.”

The medic let out a horrified scream as she drew the life energies out of him, one long desperate howl that lifted into a squeal at the end, just before his withered body blackened and crumbled into elemental carbon, his empty clothing flopping limply to the floor on top of the pile. This energy was shaped and redirected through her and into Zarkon's wounds, flushing out the invading forces and wiping his body clean of them. Haggar straightened up as much as her habitual stoop would allow, and gave the surviving medic a terrible smile that made both him and the frightened aide cringe away. “The healing pod will be effective now. See to it. I hope to see you on your feet by the end of the day, my Lord.”

“Yes,” Zarkon said mildly, “and thank you. He was becoming insufferable.”

“My pleasure, my Lord,” she replied, and strode from the room on legs that were no longer unsteady. _Yes indeed,_ she thought with dark pleasure, _youth does have its uses._

Her improved mood did not last, unfortunately. While the Druid and the canister of pure Quintessence that arrived only a half-hour later were very welcome, the news from the Center was not. “The whole lab?” she said, rage rising in her voice.

“The whole level,” the Druid corrected her. “Five of us were destroyed. The two cyborgs also, and the test subjects were released and have yet to be recaptured. The rest of us were lured into a containment chamber and trapped. All of the lab equipment is ruined. The Great Transformation Chamber is ruined. No powered instrument will function anywhere on that level. It took several hours for the engineering staff to free us, and they were required to cut a hole through the ceiling of the level below.”

Haggar snarled a curse that crackled purple on the air for a moment before fading. “How was that done? Lizenne could not have done all that alone, even if she had ever been any use with machinery. I have made a study of the green Paladin's skills, and they do not include that style of destruction!”

“Evidence of Lizenne's energies were minimal. There were traces of the Altean girl and the green Paladin at the entry point. In the lab itself, we detected traces of elemental forces from practitioners unknown to us,” the Druid rasped levelly in the face of her ire, being no longer able to experience fear. “Earth and fire being most prevalent, with water following. Very powerful, but not fully trained.”

Haggar considered that for a moment, and then a long-buried memory struck her hard enough to give her a mild shock. _“Elemental..._ the other Paladins. How could I have forgotten? The Lions have elemental orientations, and they give their pilots gifts! What were they looking for? Tell me, damn you!”

The Druid shifted slightly, unused to seeing its mistress in so much distress. “We are not sure. The door to the specimen storage room had been forced, and a hovercrate was missing, as were samples #K2E-963339045-P3HM-1 through #K2E-963339045-P3HM-4. Further traces of fire and water elemental energies were present there as well. The black Paladin's armor had been stolen also, but not by the Paladins. It had been taken by an Unilu.”

“The Champion. They have his Quintessence, I saw that clearly enough not long ago. And now they have what was left of his body.” Haggar vented a black laugh. “They hope to bring him back from the dead, do they? Impossible. I have tried it myself numerous times, and every time ended in failure. That loss may throw them into despair, if we are lucky. Even if they succeed, he is unlikely to be sane, and less likely to be acceptable to the Lion. Even if by some miracle they are able to make him fully whole again, none of the Paladins have ever been willing to share their unique status. Not once in its history has the black Lion had _three_ living Paladins! The infighting alone might well finish the team off for us.”

“It is a thing to hope for, Lady Haggar,” the Druid said, and fell in behind her as she headed back to her cabin, and just down the hall and around a corner where he had been listening in on that exchange, Subaltern Kerraz hurried off to make his own report to General Pendrash.

 

_Pirates,_ Allura thought grouchily as she walked briskly to the lifts,  _you can call them “freedom fighters” all day and all night, but pirates they are and will remain!_

She had just finished mediating what her mother would have called a “spirited financial discussion”, and it had left her in something of a mood. Pulling the hullplate off of that old Pingzweerp battle-yacht hadn't been difficult, nor had pulling the main structural beams out. That had been easy, and at the time, she had been perfectly willing to let their allies raid what was left for valuables. There had been a very great deal of valuables, since the Gantars did not value the same sort of things that other races did, and the whole load of it had been piled into one of Tepechwa's middling-sized cargo freighters. The treasure had then been moved into the Castle's cavernous docking bay for evaluation (including shaking down the freighter's pilot; that fellow must have had sixty secret pockets, and Nasty had had to empty them all), and the grand total after shaking down Nasty and factoring in provenance and antique value, had been astonishing. The hard part had been dividing it up fairly between the claimants. She sighed, rubbing at an ear that still ached slightly from having to listen to all the shouting. Things would have come to blows, she was sure, and possibly even mortal combat if the dragons and the mice hadn't been there. Oh, Ancients, the mice. Small though they were, they were very fast and had very sharp little chisel-shaped teeth, and quite a lot of light-fingered pirates had experienced them firsthand when they'd tried to palm this bit of jewelry or that. The dragons had been able to keep the peace by alternately sitting there by the glittering heap of valuables while glaring at the crowd, and venting the occasional _gronk_ to break up arguments when they became too heated.

She had managed, in the end, to apportion equal shares to everyone—including a share for the Castle—without having to shoot anyone, but it had left her weary and annoyed. She would be very glad to hand that sort of responsibility back to Shiro, when he was ready for it, along with the position of black Paladin. He was better than she was at both, to be absolutely honest, a professional warrior of keen intelligence and great charisma, and when he spoke, most people listened. How she missed him, particularly in situations like this! Allura would be grateful to take up the duty of piloting the Castle again, and she knew that Zaianne would be, too. Keith's mother hadn't made an issue of it, but she was getting bored with babysitting the ship while everyone else was off having adventures.

Allura felt the Lion rumble wistfully in the back of her mind, a sort of, _you aren't leaving me, are you,_ sort of feeling. She smiled affectionately and thought back, _of course not. If you're willing to let Shiro pilot you again, then we will take turns. He will need to ease back into the cockpit slowly, after all._

The Lion emoted a pulse of satisfaction. He, too, knew that Shiro would need a great deal of physical reconditioning before he would be able to fly again.

In the meantime, Allura was a little late for a private meeting. The whole team was very curious about the strange drama that had happened aboard the comm-station— _Jasca,_ she reminded herself—and Lizenne had finally gotten Modhri calmed down enough to talk about it. Allura had never seen him so badly shaken before and was eager to know the truth. As for the ancient corpse of Lizenne's family member, that had been placed in a stasis capsule and installed into Jasca's heavily-shielded long axis for the time being. Not before Lizenne had taken a tiny tissue sample through the blaster hole in the poor woman's suit, though. Allura privately disapproved of that bit of disrespect for the dead, but Lizenne would not be denied, and Kolivan had backed her up on it. Allura was up against something cultural here that she did not understand, and she intended to get an explanation.

She wasn't alone in that. The whole team was waiting for her, as were Coran, Zaianne, Kolivan, the mice, the dragons, and the Bucket of Shiro. There was even a holoprojector on the table, which was showing the simulated face of a Galra female—Jasca's preferred avatar, she had to remind herself. Apparently, the sufficiently advanced AI systems of ten thousand years ago were occasionally allowed to have faces of their own. Allura's eyes sought out Modhri, who was looking rather worn; he was sitting very close to Lizenne on the couch and leaning his head on her shoulder for comfort, as he did whenever he was upset about something. For her part, the Galra witch looked both thoughtful and troubled, but she nodded politely at Allura.

“There you are,” Lizenne said. “Did you manage to get everything shared out without too much bloodshed?”

Allura heaved a dramatic sigh and dropped into a handy chair. “Yes, although it was a near thing. I made sure that both you and we also got a share of the loot as operating funds. That's all packed away in the treasury for the moment, although I had my work cut out for me in keeping Nasty from finding out where that was. He says that it's traditional for an Unilu guest to try cracking it at least once.”

Coran shrugged. “He's not wrong there. They used to have competitions. The winner was the one who got to keep what was in the vault, naturally, although he had to be twice as skilled to get away with it after the awards ceremony. All those pickpockets, you know.”

“Quite,” Allura said, reflecting that the Unilu economic system must be a very interesting sort of confidence game. “Now, Lizenne, you and Modhri were going to explain a little family history to us?”

Modhri winced slightly at her pointed tone. “Yes, and I apologize for not speaking of it earlier. Habit, I'm afraid. It is a matter for Matriarchs, you see, and is not to be bandied about by the lesser sons of the House.”

“ _Family matters,”_ Jasca said, quirking an eyebrow in Lizenne's direction.

Lizenne nodded. “And ancient politics, and a lover's drama like many others, only this one may be significant. Did she really have Visions, Jasca?”

The avatar nodded. _“All the time. Mostly hunches and little premonitions, but sometimes she'd See something bigger. That's why Commander Marmora let her get away with things that she would have dismissed another agent for. Tzairona's little talent had saved too many lives to waste on her getting upset over broken regulations. That's why your man there exists at all. Tzai was the best Seer in the Order, and possibly in the Empire. She could predict events with 90%-plus accuracy up to seven years in advance, and even got the occasional flash of the future as many as twenty years ahead.”_

Lizenne's eyebrows rose. “I'm surprised that her Matriarch allowed her to take up such a dangerous occupation.”

Jasca flashed a grin. _“Nobody could stop Tzai from doing whatever she wanted. You can't discipline a person who already knows what you're planning before you do. Old Lady Ghurap'Han got her to promise to come back and take up the office of Matriarch when she died, but that was all.”_

Modhri chuckled. “A wild heart. Some traits breed true, even after so long.”

She smiled, tapping his nose gently with a finger. “All of my family's best witches have been wild. Some of us just take it to extremes. Now, speak. Our friends desire truth.”

Modhri heaved a long sigh. “My Lineage's records state that it started with the First Zandrus Khael'Xor, although that wasn't his original name. Even he didn't know what that was. He was a child of the Domain, having been the sole surviving member of his Lineage after a devastating flood swept through that region when he was a cub.”

Keith shifted uncomfortably. “Ward of the state, huh?”

“Very much so, yes, and raised in a state-run facility, no less.” Modhri made a face. “He and the other orphaned cubs were given the Khael'Xor Lineage-name, and whoever had thought that up was unkind; in one of the classical languages and depending on the context, the name can mean 'child of chaos', 'unlucky one', or even 'stormwrack'. He himself chose his personal name, and his taste in nomenclature was just as poor as the one who had given him the surname. 'Zandrus' isn't a name, but an epithet; the kindest translation that one can give the word is 'troublemaker'.”

Lance blinked at him. “All right, that's weird. Yeah, it's been ten thousand years, but how does someone like you come from a guy named Rabble-Rousing Chaotic Evil?”

Modhri snorted a laugh. “That's actually quite a good translation right there. Some might cite the good blood gained along the way, or perhaps he would have been a very different person if the flood had not taken his kin from him. According to the family records, he lived up to the name he had been given. He managed to survive his youth, but all that saved him from an early and ignominious death was sheer dumb luck and a talent for mechanics that bordered on the supernatural. There wasn't any sort of engine or mechanism that he couldn't sweet-talk, no matter how heavily it had been secured or safeguarded. He was a very able thief, and he might have been a very able spy if he'd been less impulsive. You would have had an enormous amount of trouble civilizing him, Kolivan.”

Kolivan humphed quietly. “I've had a few trainees of that nature. They either turned out to be very good or they died very quickly.”

“ _Yes, that was Zandrus, all right. Brilliant, but erratic.”_ Jasca humphed in an odd imitation of the Blade. _“Commander Marmora hated him almost as much as Lady Ghurap'Han did. That didn't stop him from qualifying for the position of head mechanic and freelance fact-finder at Headquarters. He loved it, and was good at it... most of the time, anyway.”_

“My family's records portray Tzairona as someone similar in nature, if rather more organized,” Lizenne said. “Despite her love of adventure, she was a very focused individual, very professional aetherically, and a gifted warrior. She didn't like being bound by regulations, however, and considered obedience to authority to be a crutch for the weak-witted. She would have driven you mad, Kolivan, although that attitude would have served Ghurap'Han well if she had lived to become Matriarch. Our family was an up-and-coming, ambitious distaff branch of the Royal House Hap'Banabuk'Vai, and put great importance on the fact that they were kin to a Lineage that had once ruled the world. A sufficiently bold Matriarch would have catapulted us to our current greatness in short order, due to the political turmoil at the time. That was not too long after Prince Rhonorath, the last of the Heirs of Modhri the Wise, had been assassinated, and the Empire was in a terrible state of dynastic chaos. As it was, we had to wait another three hundred years to really come into our own.”

“ _Right again,”_ Jasca confirmed. _“Old Lady Ghurap'Han had big hopes for Tzai. She had flowcharts and forward planning layouts, and even a numbered parts list for getting some of her bigger rivals out of the way. That lady had some ugly fantasies, and Tzai couldn't stand to be in the same room with her when she started droning on about them. Thwarting plots and foiling assassins was a lot more fun.”_

Lizenne smiled slyly. “Then is it true that she and Zandrus met during a convocation of high officials over at the royal palace, and that they had to work together to defuse all of the bombs that some mad fool had planted around the entire building?”

Jasca actually giggled. _“You should have heard her gush about him afterward! Tall, handsome, really built, athletic, good reflexes, totally fearless, almost magic with machinery, and a crack shot. Good dancer, too. Oh, yeah, even though he was unbelievably reckless and convinced of his own immortality, she wanted that man. Both her Commander and her entire family said no.”_

“That was where the trouble started, really,” Modhri said, rubbing his face with one hand. “She wanted him, and was not used to being thwarted. He was perfectly happy to be wanted, and didn't give a rotten tchulka for what anyone else thought. Eventually, after a great deal of unsuccessful wrangling with two very powerful authority figures, they simply took matters into their own hands. It was just as well that they both worked for an extremely clandestine agency, or the scandal would have been socially devastating for both of them.”

Hunk hummed thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “No shacking up allowed, huh?”

Lizenne huffed irritably. “Ye gods, no. A woman of a common Lineage may take whatever man she likes for her mate, but a noblewoman is expected to choose from her own class or higher. Tzairona was the next best thing to being a princess and was her Matriarch's chosen Heiress into the bargain, to say nothing of being a mighty Seer and the proud scion of an ancient and honorable House.”

“Zandrus had less than no family,” Modhri said solemnly. “He had no social status, hardly any friends, no funds other than what he had left over after his latest trip to the casino, he lived in the garage's parts storage room, and all of his possessions could fit in a traveler's pack. He was wild, undisciplined, unmannerly, engaged regularly in activities that could have easily gotten him killed, and had no notion of how to raise a family. What he did have was a deep and sincere adoration for his Lady as herself. He loved her for herself, and not as a political alliance, not as a gateway to increased power, nor even as a source of wealth. For herself. I know that one.”

He and Lizenne shared a deeply loving glance that caused Allura's heart to thump in her chest, and from the looks on the faces of those around her, hers wasn't the only one.

Jasca heaved a melancholy sigh. _“You two looked just like them, just for a second there. Wow, am I ever going to miss them both.”_

“I take it that you witnessed them mooning over each other, hmm?” Coran asked, twirling his mustache with a suggestive smile.

Jasca grinned at him. _“Are you kidding? My aft cabin was the one place that they could be sure that they wouldn't be interrupted. It was the... hmm, I'd calculate that it was the fifth visit back there that had her coming up pregnant. Commander Marmora was furious and both Tzai's mother and her Matriarch hit the ceiling, but what was done was done, and neither of them were sorry.”_

“Their timing was terrible,” Lizenne said grimly. “The High Council of Galran Prime had gotten carried away and were starting to abuse their power in a number of ways, and the Dyrchoram desperately needed Tzairona's talents to keep their royal patrons from overstepping the bounds. Pregnancy causes huge changes in a woman's body, and that can affect her aetheric talents in a number of significant ways. In Tzairona's case, her abilities simply went dormant, and the Order was forced to muddle along for months without their most accurate Oracle. The Visions returned after she gave birth—seven boys and a fearsome little daughter, but it was too little, too late. The Dyrchoram had missed a number of chances to make their work a very great deal easier, and more successful. Without her visions, they missed the sequence of events that led to the destruction of Golraz and most of its population. Tzairona returned to duty as soon as she could, leaving the cubs in the care of her man.”

Modhri grimaced. “House Ghurap'Han was obligated by custom to help him care for his children, despite the irregular nature of their birth. It was _not done,_ you see, to have cubs outside of wedlock, and _not done_ for a woman to choose a man that everyone objected to. The pairing was taboo, and the children carried a stigma because of it, but the family could not reject them because they were very possibly the only offspring of Tzairona's that they would ever get. The Matriarch allowed them the use of a comfortable apartment in a decent neighborhood near Headquarters and granted them a suitable allowance for the children's needs, on the strict condition that he stay at home and care for them as a father should. For a time, he complied. It was one of the hardest things that he'd been forced to do in his entire life.”

“He slipped up, I expect,” Zaianne murmured.

“Very much so,” Modhri continued. “Having never experienced family life, he was totally unprepared for it. He might have coped if Tzairona could have been with him, but there was no chance of that. The planet of Golraz had been destroyed, and Zarkon had gone berserk and was using Voltron as a tool for his vengeance. Tens of billions died to answer for the billions lost when that world was broken.”

Tears dripped down Allura's face. “And Father was forced to take the Lions from him, and died for it along with his team.”

“ _That did not end well,”_ Jasca concurred. _“Zarkon had freaked out like only the Imperial Twins had freaked out before. The Altean Homeworld might have been the first world to be shattered, but it wasn't the last, and the loss of King Alfor and his peacemakers, and especially of Voltron, really turned everything for the worse. Nothing and no one could stop him, not with Haggar backing him up, and he had no brakes_ at all. _He still had his bayard, if not his Lion, and she'd given him something that made him just about invulnerable. No one could fight him and live, he had a huge grudge against just about everyone, and all of the Core World royals got together and agreed that the man had to go. Haggar, too, even though she was legendary, and a major celebrity.”_

“No kidding?” Lance blurted, _“Her?_ A celebrity? She's evil!”

Jasca made a rude noise.  _“She'd also been a big help to Queen Zaianne of Namtura two hundred and forty-seven years earlier, during the Sisterhood War. As if that wasn't enough, she'd gotten attached to a heroically-inclined Golrazi prince, who then qualified for the black Lion. Good-looking woman, too, for all that she wasn't Galra. His family didn't much like how attached to her he'd gotten—Alteans and Galra can't crossbreed successfully—and the lady his Dad had arranged for him to marry put up with her only out of politeness. Trust me, the tabloids just loved her.”_

“Despite their fame, the Royal Houses of the Core Worlds decided that both of them had to be stopped.” Lizenne shook her head. “Whole armies could not do it, but it was thought that one sufficiently skilled person might be able to pull it off... if the right time and place for such a person to act could be found. That plot was a very great secret, known only to the Matriarchs of those Houses and to the Dyrchoram Commanders. And to Zandrus, who had tapped very illegally into their private communications network. Frustrated by his long confinement to house and home and determined to help his beloved, he left the children in the care of one of Tzairona's brothers and ran off to find that vital information.”

“It was the worst possible thing that he could have done,” Modhri said grimly. “A father _does not_ leave his cubs, nor does he leave them in the hands of anyone that he does not trust implicitly, and he had never fully trusted any Ghurap'Han other than his mate. I may only say that he was fortunate in that poor Balex—Tzairona's brother—was fond of the cubs, and did his best to look after the children even with his Matriarch shrieking in fury about Zandrus's abandonment of them. I am not sure of how he did it, but Zandrus did get the information that the Dyrchoram needed. Unfortunately, Tzairona could not get a clear Vision of either success or failure.”

“ _It drove her wild,”_ Jasca commented. _“Her talent was so strong that it would have taken a full coven of_ Tahe Moq _practitioners to block it, but blocked she was. All she could get were hints and fragments that didn't make sense. Tzai tried her best, but gave it up after she Saw a space station that didn't exist turn into something that was completely impossible, which then bit King Alfor's vanished spacefaring palace in half. Then she got a filthy headache and punched Commander Marmora when she tried to make Tzai try again.”_

“Haggar had been using Quintessence to boost her powers,” Kolivan said darkly. “The data cache left by Commander Marmora on a dead world had mentioned that. Zarkon took care to supply her well with captured enemies to drain of their life force.”

Jasca's image flickered, a mechanical shudder. _“Tzai had suspected something of the sort, but couldn't confirm it. We didn't have much choice but to go with what Zandrus got for us, and we couldn't even send him home because he was vital to pulling it off. Unfortunately, the enemy had been watching us all along, and set a trap. Zandrus, being on the edge of things, got away clean. Tzai and I didn't. I was the best ship in the bays for quiet approaches and fast getaways, and Tzai was an excellent assassin. She never said exactly what happened, but she wasn't quite good enough, and we didn't get away this time. You all heard her last message.”_

“Yes,” Lizenne said sadly, stroking Modhri's hair. “Zandrus never got that message, but her Commander was able to give him her own version of it. Losing Tzairona tore the heart out of him, and he had no choice but to take the children back to the House of their mother. The Matriarch was... well, 'livid' might begin, in a small way, to describe her mood at the loss of her granddaughter and Heir, and she laid down the law in a way that he no longer had the will to resist. Zarkon was using that failed assassination attempt as an excuse to wipe out the ruling Houses of every royal family in the Galra Empire, as well as the Dyrchoram. Since Ghurap'Han had been too minor a House to be included in that cabal, they were being ignored; Zarkon and Haggar had already been aware that Zandrus had been instrumental in setting up the attempt. If they had known that he still lived, and that he had eight helpless cubs...”

There were gasps and cries of horror and denial from their audience, and deep rumbling growls from the dragons. Modhri nodded. “Zandrus had no choice but to accede to every demand that the Matriarch made. Ghurap'Han would agree to protect him and his descendants, and even to give us a new surname—Khorex'Var, which might be translated as 'folly's price', or perhaps 'fool's reward'. His family would serve theirs in all ways, or face exposure to his enemies' wrath.”

“My family essentially owns his,” Lizenne murmured. “For millennia, it has been Ghurap'Han that has appointed Khorex'Var's Matriarchs, dictated the education of its children, approved husbands for its daughters and wives for its sons, holds controlling interest in any business Khorex'Var starts, employs half of the Lineage as unpaid household servants and mechanics who must service their vehicles, aircraft, and starships free of charge, sells the unsatisfactory ones to the military, claims two-thirds of the pay of any one of them who manages to find an outside job, and basically exploits them shamelessly. Every tenth son of the direct Line must bear Zandrus's name to remind the rest of them of his incompetence and failure. Zandrus himself lived for another twenty years, but he never smiled again, nor would he speak unless he was commanded to. My family's unkindnesses to him did not end with that contract.”

“That's awful!” Keith exploded. “Didn't she leave you guys any way out?”

“One.” Modhri said heavily. “Just one. If one of us were to find Tzairona's body and bring it home to House Ghurap'Han, then we would be freed from their control. It was the one concession that Zandrus was able to wring out of that old harpy. Ideally, it would be a Zandrus that was sent out to search for her, but the Ghurap'Han Matriarchs usually found excuses to keep them planetbound along with the rest of us. My great-uncle managed to slip away into espionage, which the Matriarchs grudgingly approved because it paid very well—and Ghurap'Han could claim the bulk of his income. That he escaped into the ranks of the Blade of Marmora still delights me.”

Kolivan gave Modhri one of his rare smiles. “He was one of our best, and losing him was a great blow to all of us. I had always wondered why he sometimes referred to himself as an escaped slave, but he would never elaborate.”

“He was not wrong to call himself that,” Modhri frowned. “Ghurap'Han's current Matriarch was not pleased to lose that source of income, and both my uncle Zandrus and my brother Zandrus were essentially chained to their Household duties after that. That I have managed to locate the one thing that will free us from their clutches... ye gods, that's going to shake us all up! We've been bred and trained for technical skill and obedience since before the Empire as we know it was established. The dream of freedom is lovely, but the reality... that will frighten some of us very much.”

Lizenne stroked his face with one hand, her fingers tracing the arc of his cheekbone and jaw lovingly. “Let the bold ones come to us,” she said, “and let the weak and frightened stay. If they are free, then they have that choice. My Matriarch, for all that she will fight it bitterly, will be forced to release them. I ran the sample I took from Tzairona's body through the sequencer, Modhri. She is unmistakably Ghurap'Han, and it matches her personal gene-record in the House Archives perfectly. That is indeed Tzairona, come back to liberate her children.”

“But what if she tells Zarkon who they really are?” Pidge protested.

Lizenne gave her a terrible smile. “Exposing them now would do Ghurap'Han far more harm than good; Zarkon would destroy them all for harboring the descendants of his ancient enemies. In any case, young lady, I intend to keep that monster far too busy trailing around after us to bother with a lot of unimportant servants and servicemen. We need not hurry back to Galran Prime just yet; if Modhri's family wishes to join him as a vital part of the Alliance, I want to have somewhere safe on hand to house them anyway.”

Allura smiled slyly. “And if they are as skilled as Modhri is with ship maintenance and engineering, well! I am sure that we could find a home and good work for them among our friends and allies.”

Kolivan leveled a finger at Modhri. “If there are those among them that are his equal in talent and temperament, then I would welcome a share of them myself. The Olkari would be delighted to speak with them, I'm sure, and the Beronites as well. Perhaps even the Ghost Fleet and the Halidexans might accept them, if we can keep the Hoshinthra from getting ideas.”

“But what about you two?” Hunk asked, looking worried. “I mean, you two, you're... well... sort of...”

“Outside of social convention?” Lizenne suggested. “Oh, yes. I am the first woman of Ghurap'Han since Tzairona's time to take a Khorex'Var man as anything other than a plaything. I made my preference very clear to my Matriarch, going so far as to warn her that nothing short of death would stop me from getting what I wanted. Thus, Modhri was shipped off to the Academy and I was affianced to Kelezar's brother without my consent. The events that followed shortly after you and Shiro met me on Zampedri have resulted in the both of us being declared officially dead, and therefore, I may choose whomever I like. Modhri and I _are_ married—we got the Elder Dragons to officiate as soon as he could walk without assistance. Frankly, my delightful nephew, I will accept their authority where I would completely ignore that of my former Matriarch; indeed, Zampedri will be the home of my children and my House, and I will choose a new surname for our Lineage that will have no relation to those of the past. We will not live where we are not welcome.”

Modhri cocked her an amused glance. “Finally got them to agree to that, did you?”

She chuckled. _“I_ didn't. Tilla and Soluk did. We are of their pack, my love, and the pack must stay together. Our cubs will be raised alongside theirs, and will enjoy the protection of the greater pack. The price of that privilege is one that I am eager to pay—Galra must relearn _Tahe Moq,_ they said, and I intend to start with my daughters. I will want at least seven vigorous little girls out of you, sir.”

Modhri's smile turned a trifle foolish, and his voice was slightly unsteady when he replied, “I am ready to serve you, my Lady.”

“And you will teach those of us who are able to learn?” Kolivan asked.

“Of course,” Lizenne replied. “All who come and pass the dragons' inspection will be taught. I keep my promises, my Lord Blade. And as for you, Paladins...”

“Yes?” Lance said warily.

“I'll want the lot of you there with me when you aren't out playing with those big robot cats.” She smirked at them. “Your own talents will want further development, and a stiff run through the grasses will be a magnificent cure for heroism fatigue... and for raising your own children, in time.”

Allura reflected that there was not one single unreddened Human face in the room. The dragons were grinning, she could hear the mice laughing, Kolivan was trying not to smile, Coran and Zaianne had already given in to the urge to do so, and even the Bucket of Shiro was glittering merrily.

“I'll have to pass, alas,” she said as her teammates cast each other embarrassed glances. “As the last member of the Altean Royal Family, I'll have to choose a man of my own from Quolothis to continue that line. That doesn't mean that I won't visit, of course, if only to play with the babies.”

There were sudden expressions ranging from surprise to disappointment on the other Paladins' faces—they hadn't considered that and didn't like it much, but Zaianne answered before they could comment on it.

“Bring your own,” Zaianne said with a chuckle. “They will make fast friends with Khaeth's future siblings, and there will be no strife between our two peoples any longer.”

If possible, Keith went even redder. “Mom,” he groaned.

“I am still young enough, and I have made you a promise,” Zaianne rebutted easily. “One of an elder son's greatest privileges is the right to outrank a younger sister.”

“Picked someone out already, then, Madame?” Coran asked.

“Not yet.” Zaianne cast a quelling look at Jasca, who was grinning hugely, pointing at Kolivan, and making a gesture that looked lewd. “Not quite yet, but there are a number of very good prospects hanging about, and if there are more like Modhri to be had among his kin, I shall definitely have a look at them!”

Modhri smiled sweetly at her. “And I shall welcome you into the family, my Lady.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haggar continues to defend her title as Scariest Bitch In The Universe.


	14. Resurrection and Fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Sorry for the chapter being so late, but one of our cats passed away just a few days before Halloween. Callista had a particularly close bond with Spanch, and well...that sort of thing kind of destroys muses for a while. But here we are! Next chapter, and with an event you've all been waiting for! Enjoy!

Chapter 14: Resurrection and Fireworks

 

The event that everybody had been waiting for came in the middle of the afternoon eleven days later. By then, Jasca had already passed into the care of the Blade of Marmora, and had disappeared into the secret reaches of space after promising Modhri with every sacred oath that she knew of that she would safeguard Tzairona's body until they could visit Galran Prime. In the meantime, they had other things to do. Allura had been required to put some polish on her diplomatic skills whenever Tchak brought other rebel group leaders by, and Nasty had kept them all busy with villainy lessons when Zaianne and Lizenne weren't keeping them fit down on the training deck.

They were halfway through a lecture on the best ways to talk down a lynch mob when the PA system activated. _“Paladins,”_ Lizenne's voice stated, _“It's time. The body is complete and breathing on its own now. Kindly bring the Bucket and anyone who wishes to contribute or observe.”_

This caused a general stampede. Keith, being closest to the table, grabbed the canister and ran for the lifts, his team right behind him, and Nasty right behind them. On the way, they picked up Coran, Modhri, and Zaianne as well, and it was a rather tangled group that eventually piled into the lab. Lizenne, standing by the reconstruction tank, lifted an eyebrow at them. “That was quick,” she said, noting Coran among their number. “Who's minding the Castle?”

“The mice,” he replied calmly. “Thought that was a bit off, but Plachu showed me their flight certification, so it should be all right. The dragons are keeping an eye on them.”

Lizenne gave him a blank, disbelieving stare, glanced at Allura, who nodded, and then rolled her eyes. “Fine. I hope they've got the qualifying flight time for combat engagements, if it becomes necessary.”

Lance narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Allura. “Your _mice_ can fly a starship in a space battle? What sort of fighters would they use? What else can they do, save the universe from an all-devouring evil?”

“Maybe,” Allura said, unable to resist teasing the blue Paladin. “They haven't yet, but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be prepared to do so.”

Lance glowered at her, then glanced over at Hunk and Pidge, who were looking very thoughtful, and he just _knew_ that they were thinking up ways to build a mouse-sized fighter craft. “Don't, guys,” he hissed, “just don't.”

“Why can't we make them little-bitty Lions?” Hunk said, nudging him lightly in the ribs. “I think it would be cool if Voltron had a mousy mini-me. Wouldn't you think a mousy mini-Voltron would be cool? We'd call it Vole-Tron—ooh! And if we made it able to burrow underground, we could call it Mole-Tron, and--”

Thankfully, Zaianne smacked him upside the head before it got any worse. “Stop that. Interesting though it would be, you'd need hantalurium to make it work, and that metal is extraordinarily rare. Let us focus instead on doing something slightly less impossible.”

“Oh, you're no fun,” Pidge said, craning her neck to get a look at Shiro's new body.

It was definitely him, but it was very unfinished-looking, and frankly lopsided in spots. The original right arm had been taken when he was at his physical peak, and it contrasted oddly with the rest of him, which was as soft and undeveloped as a newborn's. His head and powerful neck sat oddly on the broad but untrained shoulders, and his hair had grown out into an untidy, shoulder-length mop, the ends of the white forelock trailing in the general vicinity of his nose. He was peculiarly bicolored as well, the head and arm showing the lightly-bronzed skin of a man of Asian descent who had been out and about in the sunlight fairly frequently, but the rest of him was as pale and pasty-looking as a longtime basement-dweller. “He's gonna be annoyed about that,” she muttered. “Aren't there any of these things that can build muscle back up, too?”

“Yes, but they are not available to ordinary citizens,” Modhri replied with a slight frown. “They're extremely expensive to build and tricky to maintain. A very high-end hospital might keep one for the rich patients, or a capital ship might keep one for use by its senior officers, but everyone else must make do with the standard physical therapy.”

“Or if you're someone like Haggar, who prefers not to have to wait.” Lizenne sneered. “Or uses more unconventional methods. Have you been practicing, Lance?”

Lance gulped. “Every day, since we got him out of that Robeast. Um. Are you sure that you can't help me with this?”

“I don't dare.” Lizenne indicated the canister cradled in Keith's arms. “Shiro had already suffered severe trauma at the hands of an aetheric practitioner by the time we first met, and had difficulty in keeping a grip on his nerves while I was teaching him how to fight Druids. His little adventure through alternate space and time, followed by a second captivity, certain and excruciating torture, and conversion into a rather impressive monster, has not helped at all. As thin as his pack-bond with you and the others might be, it was still strong enough for you to effect a rescue. He knows your auras now, and will be willing to trust your touch more than he would mine. I am an alien to him, and a potential threat. If he panics, I won't be able to hold him, and all of this work will have been for nothing. All I can do is offer my strength, if you need it, funneled through Allura.”

Allura gave her an interested look. “Yes. You've never tried to form a strong aetheric bond with any of us, have you? Not in the way we've been doing it. There has been that spell you use to calm us down, and the dream-searches, but nothing deeper.”

Lizenne nodded. “Once again, I don't dare. My own instincts are too strong, and I come from a race of dedicated pack-hunters, Allura. I am very much a throwback to the days when that sort of group bond was vital to our survival. All of my instincts are telling me that I am the Matriarch here—Both of our ships have become my Domain, in my mind. Zaianne is my sister, and while she may be the better warrior, I am the stronger witch; this makes me her senior. Some part of me considers Coran to be a brother, and you are my nieces and nephews, and Modhri, of course, is my man. I am powerfully motivated to nurture and protect all of you in any way that I can. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem, but the Lions have chosen you, and in order to function properly, the bonds between you and them must remain unchallenged. I _may not_ do anything that will interfere with the Lion-bond, or the Lions might well decide to destroy me. The black Lion has already made that threat, and the dragons have told me to take it seriously. I'm not about to argue with either of them.”

“Sensible, very sensible,” Coran observed. “Nothing like a death threat to get one's point across. So, Sister Dearest, how are the Paladins going to do this?”

She gave him a quick, _don't get cocky, pal_ sort of glance, and then waved a hand at the body in the tank. “At the moment, Shiro's body is stable. Once decanted, it will breathe and the heart will beat, but not for long. It's fully functional, but without a soul in it, it's basically a pile of meat. I give it maybe half an hour, during which time Lance must move Shiro's Quintessence into every cell and fiber of it. This won't be easy—the arm, the head, and two organs will be familiar ground, but the rest is completely new. Picture your living quarters, Coran, with all of your own personal possessions and treasures. Now picture that someone has taken all but a few items out and replaced them with identical but brand-new articles. How would that make you feel?”

Coran hummed thoughtfully, stroking his mustache. “Before or after I'd spent a few vargas hitting the bastard with a stick?”

“Exactly,” Lizenne said over the ripple of amusement from the others. “I doubt that Shiro will fight Lance, but he won't be terribly happy about the situation. I want Allura here to feed Lance strength drawn from the rest of us; this is precision work and that requires enormous amounts of energy. Keith, you'll want to stand by as well, in case the body starts to foul; the body will respond to the distress of the soul, and toxins may start forming up in his blood. I don't want him waking up with night terrors and cramps, or wetting the bed, for that matter.”

He would hate that, Keith knew. Shiro was fastidious about his habits and proud of his self-control. An accident like that would make him horribly uncomfortable. Keith nodded. “Gotcha. I'm ready any time.”

“As are we,” Modhri said, with a questioning glance at Nasty.

Nasty gestured a negative. “Not me, pal. Villain, remember? You've made me welcome, but I'm not family. I like the idea of witnessing a miracle—and record what's going on for future blackmail purposes, of course.”

Zaianne smiled dangerously. “That's all right, but we get seventy-five percent of the sales every time you find a customer.”

“Oh, now wait just a minute!” Nasty protested.

“Can it, Nasty, I know where you hide your loot and can skew the recording,” Pidge said patiently. “Besides, if Lizenne isn't recording this already, I'm a furblit. Let's do this.”

“Not just yet, if you please,” Modhri said with unusual firmness. “I ask that you remove my ward, my Lady.”

Lizenne hissed in surprise, whirling to face him. “Modhri--”

He shook his head and gestured for patience. “He saved my life, Lizenne. Shiro could very easily have ended me in that arena, and indeed, it might have been more merciful at that point to have done so. He could not— _would not—_ do that, and by that refusal allowed you to recover what was left of me. I acknowledge the debt; by sharing what he made possible for me to regain, I repay it. I will do this, Lizenne.”

The determination in his voice was like a knife blade swathed in silk; it was very rare for him to put his foot down like that, and everyone knew it. Lizenne nodded. “Very well, but that ward goes right back on afterward, do you hear me? Allura, you will be _very_ careful in how you draw strength from him. He is still very fragile from the damage he took, and I will not have him broken again.”

“I will not hurt him,” Allura promised.

“No, you will not,” Lizenne echoed, and there was a look in her eye that told Allura louder than words that any mistakes would be severely punished. She laid a hand on Modhri's arm and murmured a string of odd, hard-sounding syllables; in response, flickers of golden light glimmered under Modhri's fur for a moment, and were gone.

He blinked, swayed slightly, and looked around as if seeing them all for the first time, his eyes lingering on the Paladins. _“Oh,”_ he said softly. “Oh, that's strange. They're all so bright.”

Her lips twisted into something that wasn't quite a smile. “They are, aren't they? They are much more so when they're working. Bear it as well as you can, Modhri. This is important.”

He nodded, staring in fascination at Keith, who was still holding the Bucket. “It is. Very. Ye Gods. I will not be sorry when you reset the ward.”

“Remember that this was your idea.” She tapped his nose smartly and turned to the tank's control board. “All right, let's get started. Keith, just put that down on the worksurface for now, and be ready to provide backup. Allura? Pidge? Hunk?”

“Ready,” they chorused.

“Good. Coran? Zaianne? Will you be contributing?”

“Khaeth has claimed him as his brother, and therefore he is my son. He has my strength.” Zaianne declared.

“Proud to participate, Sister Dearest,” Coran replied, unwilling to let the opportunity both to ruin the mood and get a little teasing in get away, and he quite ignored her sharp look. “Count me in.”

“Very well,” Lizenne said, flipping a few switches and pressing a large blue button.

The machine hummed, and the tank began to tilt toward the horizontal in a slow, graceful arc. The fluid within drained out as it did so, glugging back into the device's reservoir tanks, and the Paladins watched with wide eyes as the tank itself swung completely upside-down and fogged the body with a mist of something orange.

“A mild stimulant,” Lizenne explained as the body gasped for air and coughed out gouts of bluish liquid, “and inverting it gets the fluid out of the lungs as quickly and gently as possible. I know, it looks dreadful, but there is no one in there to feel discomfort at the moment, and it won't last for long anyway.”

The tank swung back around to halt at a roughly forty-five degree angle, and the rest of the array produced a sort of fold-out recovery cot complete with heated blankets. The body was deposited upon it and wrapped well, and the reconstruction system powered down with a satisfied whirr. For a long moment, there was no sound other than that still figure's breathing.

“Very good,” Lizenne murmured, moving over to the worksurface and laying her hands on the lid of the canister. “Lance, make yourself ready. I will release the seals on this when you give me the go-ahead, and you will catch and direct what comes out. You have done this once before, and in difficult circumstances. This will be easier.”

He glanced nervously at the jar. “Should I ask Blue for help?”

Lizenne frowned pensively for a moment. “Not directly. She is a weapon, not a surgical tool, and this is not a physical wound. Hmmm. One thing that you might do is ask the black Lion—through Allura—to provide an extra anchor if he starts trying to escape. This will be extremely unsettling for the poor man, and if he panics, he's not going to be able to think clearly. This is a job for the team, I feel. Begin now. We don't have much time.”

Lance gulped and laid a hand on the blanket-wrapped body, looking down into the still face. He could feel the vitality in the new flesh and bone, and how empty and fragile it was, like an eggshell. If he screwed this up, there would be no do-overs, and he didn't think that he could live with himself if he failed. “I'm not sure that I can do this,” he whimpered.

Zaianne gave him a sympathetic look. “If it would help, I have a song that my great-grandmother taught me when I was very small. She was a Healer like you are, although nowhere near as strong. When I was little, she would mend my cuts and scrapes—I was a clumsy cub, believe it or not—while singing it with me. It has no power of its own, but it does help to relax and focus a person.”

Lance smiled, remembering the times that his own grandmother had soothed his fears in the same way. “Go ahead. I'll take any help that I can get.”

“Very well,” Zaianne said, and began to sing.

It was very simple, no more than two verses sung in slow tempo and a minor key, which repeated at the end of the second verse. He did not understand the words, but Zaianne had a surprisingly good voice and the effect was indeed very comforting. Modhri smiled nostalgically and added his mild baritone to hers in pleasant harmony. Lizenne cast them a fond look and joined in as well, and the three-part harmony did much to ease Lance's nerves. He pulled in a deep breath and closed his eyes, opening his other perceptions. He could sense the others around him in a whirl of intense colors; they were close, tense with readiness to offer their aid, and the body before him glowed faintly with a soft, pale light. The original portions had an additional tint of blue-purple at the edge of that shining, and he knew that they remembered who had lived in them, and that they wanted him back. If he started with those...

He nodded to Lizenne, who then pressed two catches on the lid of the canister. There was a click and a faint hiss, and the contents of the jar began to glitter agitatedly. Lance reached out and enfolded the substance in soothing blue before it could panic and drew it toward the body. Before he could do more than that, however, he noticed something worrying. The body's extremities were starting to darken and discolor. Just the toes and the tips of the fingers, but the body was starting to go bad already, just from the lack of a tenant, and he could not repair that and hold Shiro at the same time.

“Keith,” he hissed urgently, _“Keith!_ It's trying to foul on me! I need help!”

Keith was right there, a bright, hot, ruby-toned presence that warmed him with his simple proximity. Lance felt their powers lock together and begin the eternal revolution of _:purify/heal:--:purify/heal:--:purify/heal:_ that had allowed them to both preserve and destroy not so long ago, right at the heart of enemy territory. This task was far more important than that earlier event had been, and he tightened his grip on the long streak of blue-purple light that was the very essence of Shiro. This was not easy. It flared and sparkled as it pushed against his hold, confused and frightened by this treatment; Lance gritted his teeth and flowed with it, rolling like a wave and keeping him from escaping. It was a terrible strain, and he gasped in relief when he felt a wave of rosy warmth flow into him—Allura, lending him energy. _Head first,_ he thought to himself, opening a cool blue circle in the sheet of dancing flames that was keeping the cranium clear of taint and funneling every last bit of his friend's essence into it. It blazed in astonishment and the body bucked in response under that stimulus; he felt Keith suddenly struggle to keep lactic acid from forming in the muscles, and tamp down on the sudden rush of adrenaline and stress toxins. Shiro tried to curl into a defensive knot within the brain; Lance was at a loss as to what to do to get him out of there and into the rest of his body until he felt gold and green tones joining Allura's rose. _Earth. Growing things... plants. Roots!_

Years ago in middle school Biology class, he had been shown the nervous and cardiovascular systems of the human body, and he had seen how much those nerves and veins had resembled the roots of the blueberry bushes that he and his brothers had helped his Aunt Lucia to plant. The whole point of roots—and nerves, and veins—was to get water, nutrients, and energy to where they needed to be. Shiro had holed up right in the center of the nervous system, and huge arteries fed right into that organ. Grinning, he used that knowledge and one other lesson, that of _capillary action,_ the mechanism by which the soil itself pulled in and distributed water. Lance understood water. Shiro flashed and flickered like a major lightning storm as Lance used Shiro's own body to draw him into itself like a sponge. That made the work easier, although not by much, and the energy requirements were huge. Lance began to register energy signatures that he had never felt before flowing into him: a brash, creamy-orange flush of surprising complexity that could only be Coran; a hard, bright, focused red-purple that had to be Zaianne; a lambent, opaline gold several shades darker than Hunk's that was unmistakably Lizenne; and finally, a delicate, subtle silver that sparkled the same way that broken mirrors did. Modhri, who had been broken and painstakingly repaired, and was taking a terrible risk by doing this. Lance growled at that; Haggar had splintered his very soul, and had tried to do the same to Shiro. He would _not_ waste what he was being given, and he would not permit himself to fail!

Shiro fought back, unwilling to comply, thickening his substance in an attempt to resist being pressed into the unfamiliar environment. Lance knew how he felt; he himself had had dreams now and again where everything familiar to him had been just slightly different, slightly _wrong;_ how his family had not been his family, his room had not been his room, even the dogs hadn't been quite right, and yet everyone around him insisted that no, everything was fine. Those were the ones he woke up from sweating in terror, and for Shiro, this was real life. Trying to work through his determined resistance was also taking too much time, and far too much energy. To his horror, his friends' energy was beginning to falter. _“Come on, come on, come on!”_ he hissed, whether mentally or physically, he couldn't tell. “We need help here, guys, we can't do it without you! _Help me!”_

As sudden as the first ray of dawn sunlight coming through a mountain range, they were there. Huge feline figures, on this plane seemingly carved of crystal: Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald, Topaz, and Tanzanite, each burning like a sun. They had arrayed themselves in a circle around Lance and the others, and when glowing lines snapped into being between them, Lance was amazed to see one anchored in his own heart. The Lion-bond, established and nurtured so carefully over the past two years, strengthened by their close contact and the lessons learned along the way. He was a part of his Lion now, and when he looked up at his team, he saw that this was true of the rest of them as well... or nearly so. The black Lion had three bonds—one faint and fading, leading off into the stars. One bright and slightly rosy, anchored firmly in Allura's heart. One slightly thinner and dimmer, but anchored no less firmly in the boiling knot of Shiro's Quintessence; the Lion wanted him, that was very plain, and would not let him go.

A voice spoke to him then, sounding of laughter and falling water. _The witch called me a weapon,_ the blue Lion whispered coyly to him, _she is only mostly right. We will prove her to be mostly wrong. Take hold of the bond, and the power within it is yours._

Lance seized upon the fluid blue rope; it was like taking hold of a live wire, but it filled him with strength. His eyes full of celestial color, he fed that power into Shiro's spirit, forcing the reluctant rescuee to pay attention. “Move your butt, Shiro,” Lance panted, “we don't have all day! We need you, here and now, and fighting it isn't going to work!”

Shiro flickered again at the sudden pressure of Lance's will, but seemed to get the idea. He stopped resisting and flowed cleanly into the heart, coalescing a portion of himself there in a hot bright knot of energy, and the blue-purple radiance of his part of the Lion-bond took a firm hold there. He spread out from there in a rush after that, perhaps encouraged by a part that was truly his own. The right arm was reclaimed, and the liver, and then he headed south in a cerulean rush, flooding every last cell down to the atomic level. Lance held everything in place for just a little time longer, just until every last drop of Quintessence had soaked in and found its place before he relaxed his grip on it, and smiled when it stayed put. The heart was beating, the organs were functioning, Shiro's breathing continued steadily, and the brain was a triumphal fireworks display instead of the mere background mutter of automatic systems that it had been before. Lance sighed and released his bond, feeling the Lions subside back into quiescence. The others withdrew as well; he opened his material eyes, closing down the inner ones that had showed him so much, and once again became aware of the physical plane.

His own physical body, he discovered to his mild dismay, had a few things to tell him as well. First, that he was very tired, hungry, and thirsty, and that his clothing and hair were soaked and clammy with the sweat of his efforts. Secondly, that he seemed to be holding hands with Keith, who looked no better than he did. Quite a strong handclasp, too; he and Keith shared a slightly embarrassed glance, but were too tired to make an issue of it. Instead, they turned to look at the others, and found them to be just as worn out. Modhri let out an explosive breath and sagged wearily into a chair, and Lizenne was by his side in a heartbeat, muttering the words that laid the protective ward back over him in a voice made dry and husking by the massive effort that she and the rest of them had undertaken.

“Did we do it?” Pidge asked, sounding parched and exhausted. “Is he in there?”

Zaianne, staying upright out of sheer determination, tapped the empty canister with one finger. “I believe so. He's not in this thing and the body's still breathing, anyway.”

“We have done the impossible,” Lizenne rasped tiredly. “Successfully, too. No leakage, and the instinctual anchors are engaging very nicely. He'll not escape us now. That was very well done, all of you... and _yes,_ Lance, you may tell your Lion that she was right and I was wrong.”

Lance smirked, hearing the laughter of his Lion in the back of his mind. “Damn right, she was.”

Hunk pushed a hank of sweaty hair out of his face and leaned on Allura, who nearly fell over. “And that's a good thing right now. Wow, but he's strong.”

Allura had to steady herself on the cot, which creaked. “When do you think he'll wake up?”

Lizenne shrugged, holding Modhri close. “Whenever he pleases. In the meantime, we need refreshing as well. Nasty?”

“Yes?” the Unilu answered in a shaken voice. The view of the “miracle” from his side of things hadn't looked like much, but seeing a canister of Quintessence empty itself, and then watching a man who had rather obviously been dead stop being so had been quite enough.

“I arranged for a large amount of food before I called all of you here. It's in a hovercrate in the kitchen. Kindly bring it up before you leave the ship, Nasty. We will need it as soon as possible.”

“I'm on my way,” he replied, keeping his back to the wall as he made his way to the door. “You all look kind of ragged out... um. The dead guy looks pretty good, though. I'm just going to feed you all and then run away, all right?”

She snorted in amusement as Nasty scuttled away. “Go right ahead. I'm sure that everything went just fine.”

“Good,” Coran said, sagging to the floor, his mustache drooping. “It would be a terrible thing if we'd wasted all that effort. Ancients, that was a bit of work and no mistake.”

Everyone followed his example. They sat in silence for a little time, too tired to move. Eventually, those with sharper senses of smell perked up a little, sniffing at the air. Coran whiffled with the air of a connoisseur. “Aha! Do I smell the siren fragrance of celenra gel?”

He certainly did. A large box had just floated in through the doorway, piled high with three world's worth of goodies, and the whole crowd attacked it without hesitation. Everything in it tasted like ambrosia to their depleted systems, and they emptied it in short order.

Hunk let out a huge belch and glanced guiltily at the cot where Shiro was still sleeping. “Sorry. Um. Should we have saved him some?”

Lizenne licked sauce off of her fingers and gestured a negative. “No need. I made sure that his system was packed with nutrients before I decanted him. He won't be hungry for at least a day, which is just as well. His stomach and gut will need to ease into full function gradually. Soft, bland foods and juices for the first few days, I'm afraid. Anything stronger will give him indigestion.”

Keith snorted. “He's going to hate that. Shiro can go through one of those big jars of kimchi in less than a week.”

“What's that?” Allura asked curiously.

Hunk sighed longingly and rubbed at his belly. “Nappa cabbage, garlic, ginger, green onions, salt, sugar, red pepper flakes, chili powder, daikon radish, fish sauce, and dried salted shrimp, all chopped up together with a little water and allowed to ferment. You either love it or you don't. Mom has a recipe that half the neighborhood thinks is the food of the gods, but Lance's weird cousin Sister Maria-Dolores thinks it's of the Devil.”

Lance snickered. “It gave her the runs while she was singing in the Choir at church. That was the fastest performance of 'Oh Maria' I've ever heard. Served her right for that lecture she gave me about the sins of gluttony that morning, when I'd asked for a snack cake. We laughed about it all week, but she never forgave your Mom.”

Hunk shrugged. “Mom didn't like her much, either.”

Zaianne chuckled, running loving fingers through Keith's dark hair. “I love it. Khaeth's father introduced me to kimchi while I was pregnant, and suffering from terrible cravings. He'd caught me roasting and eating scorpions, and thought that kimchi might be better. It certainly helped, for I felt much better after I'd eaten my way through the crate he'd had in the basement, and was able to give him a live son, healthy and howling, a short time later.”

“Yeah,” Pidge said, cocking an interested glance at Keith. “I've been kind of wondering, actually. If you guys usually have as many as ten kids, then how come Keith's an only child?”

Zaianne's eyes grew sad, and she held her only son close; Keith was too tired to object. “I had only just recovered from crashing a starship, remember, and that bad landing was the one that would have killed me if I had not been rescued immediately afterward. Even so, Khaeth's father could not do anything more than to set the broken bones, sew up the worst cuts, and treat the burns. It was something of a miracle that I recovered at all, much less well enough to attempt a romance, and I did not get the correct nutrition during pregnancy.” She frowned, and gazed thoughtfully upon Lance. “I wasn't expecting to become pregnant anyway, having been from an entirely different part of the cosmos. It may be possible that the blue Lion, which we had discovered before Khaeth was born, knew who I was carrying and helped out a little. Healing is the Lion's gift to you, Lance; perhaps it practiced a little of that upon me. It's just as well that he was an only child. His father could not have supported a full clutch, and if I'd given him a fierce little witch-daughter...”

Keith grunted and laid his head on her shoulder. “We'd all still be lurking in the desert right now, or floating in jars on a shelf in some secret government lab or other. The Feds don't like surprises.”

Zaianne vented an identical grunt. “No, they don't. They certainly took their time sniffing around the crash site. Fortunately, my ship was hardwired to self-destruct and had scattered itself very widely before they could find it. I had to be moved to the basement, where I stayed for several days while they asked your father stupid questions. They got bored and wandered off eventually, and we were left in peace after that.”

Keith heaved a deep, weary sigh. “Mom... Did Uncle Jake know about you?”

“No.” Zaianne rested her chin on his head. “Your father couldn't be sure that Jake wouldn't tell someone else. Jake was a was a good man, but he took his duties to the State rather more seriously than his duties to his family. Your father never said much about it, but I had the impression that he'd been declared dead by his kin.”

Keith might have replied, but there was a groan from the nearby cot, and a blurry mutter of, “Whoa. What happened?”

“Shiro?” Pidge squeaked.

“Yeah?” the man on the cot said, and in a flash everyone was on their feet and jockeying for position around him. The occupant gazed up at them with vague amazement, the iron-gray eyes seeking out Pidge in particular. He smiled, and that smile was all Shiro. “Hey,” he said dreamily. “It worked.”

“ _Shiro!”_ Pidge squealed, throwing herself over his chest in an attempt to get a hug in, and the other Paladins followed suit.

There was a faint, breathless  _“oof!”_ from somewhere under the pile, and Lizenne laughed and hauled at the back of Hunk's shirt. “Stop that, you lot! Those lungs of his are less than a month old, and I'll not have you squashing them! Let him breathe!”

They complied, although reluctantly, and slightly squished though he was, Shiro continued to grin rather foolishly up at them. “Hi!” he said.

“ _'Hi?'”_ Pidge demanded, “'Hi'? Dammit, Shiro, what the hell did you do? Where the hell have you been? Do you have _any_ idea how badly you scared all of us? Do you? If you _ever_ scare me like that again, I'm going to program the black Lion to play Spice Girls songs whenever you fly him! _Spice Girls,_ Shiro! So you had better behave yourself, or you're gonna find out what I want, what I really-really want! Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

Shiro raised his right arm and flexed the hand, staring fixedly at fingers that were no longer mechanical. He reached up and pulled her head down to his level, whispered, “My hero,” and kissed her on the nose.

Pidge shot bolt upright, clutching at her nose and turning bright red. Hunk, his eyes streaming tears, had different ideas. “Hey, I'm a hero too. Don't I get a kiss?”

“I can't reach you,” Shiro replied dreamily, groping awkwardly at Hunk's shirt. “You're too tall.”

“Oh, well, then,” Hunk said, and bent down to receive his benison.

“Hunk...” Keith groaned.

Hunk straightened back up with a humph. “Hey, man, I killed a bunch of monsters and the lab they rode in on for this guy. I deserve a smooch. Isn't it traditional for knights in shining armor to get kisses after slaying monsters?”

“Yup!” Shiro said cheerfully. “Plus half of the kingdom and the Princess's hand in marriage. And there's Allura! Hi, Allura! Are you going to marry a knight in shining armor?”

Lance glared down at his grinning teammate. “Lizenne, what did you do? He's drunk!”

“Euphoric,” Lizenne corrected, scowling at the readout on the screen. “Probably from the stimulant that kept his heart going while we worked. Mind you, he's also probably deliriously happy to be back on the physical plane, and to have been rescued, to say nothing of not being tortured horribly by someone who has gone right through insanity and has come out the other side.”

“Not being dead and not being a monster does help,” Modhri said with a wry smile. “I've been there, and I chortled almost constantly for three days. It drove poor Lizenne right up the wall.”

“All of the above!” Shiro chirped, “I feel _great._ Limp as a rag, but great. You all look great, too. Kept up with your training, I see... oh, hey, Modhri, nice to see you again, and you, too, Lizenne, and Coran too, and... who's that? Keith, that lady looks like a tall, purple, extra you.”

“That's my Mom,” Keith said, smiling up at his mother. “She sort of came as a surprise.”

Shiro sobered, focusing his eyes with a conscious effort upon Zaianne's face. “She looks exactly like I thought she would.”

“Do I?” Zaianne asked, eyebrows lifting.

“I had a dream,” Shiro said, and yawned hugely. “You stabbed Sendak. That was weird, because I thought he was dead.”

Zaianne shared a surprised look with Lizenne before answering. “I did stab Sendak, who was not dead enough at that time to suit any of us. He is no longer a threat. I see that we will have a great deal to talk about, and to catch up on.”

Shiro yawned again, sagging back into his cushions. “Not just now, okay? Kinda tired right now. What a trip it's been to get here. I dreamed that, too. I dream a lot of things.” He was silent for a moment, sighed, and then continued in a nearly normal tone, “You're going to use this for later blackmail, aren't you, Pidge?”

Pidge looked offended for a moment, and then giggled. “No, you get a free pass this time. Special coming-back-from-the-dead treat. Go to sleep now.”

He smiled. “Okay,” he murmured, and sank into a deep slumber.

Zaianne straightened up and gave the sleeping man a puzzled look. “Oh, yes, we will talk later on. Dreams, eh?”

Lizenne nodded. “It's not an uncommon vector. All the same, I will want more than a few vague statements, but they'll have to wait. For the time being, we all need to clean up and rest. Go on, you all smell like a hard day's work, those of you who don't smell like rare mushrooms or swamp beasties, and you'll be hungry again fairly soon as well, and dying for a nap. Go and see whether or not the mice and the dragons have gotten us into any space battles while we've been working.”

 

Lizenne might have been wrong about the Lions, but she was right about the aftereffects of a major aetheric effort. A hot soak in the Queen's suite had them all ready to worship the god of plumbing (a real deity, Coran told them, and one invoked regularly by the Ruibolo people of Huporlen Nine whenever the pipes got clogged up). By the time that they could bear to leave the water's embrace, they were all hungry again, and converged on the kitchen, where a vote was taken on whether or not to worship Hunk a little. That vote was unanimous, and Lance promised to sew him up some proper divine raiment later. Zaianne, pleading exhaustion, wandered off to her room, and Coran, a little worried about leaving his usual post unmanned for so long, constructed himself a sandwich of rare wonder and terror and took it up to the bridge with him, leaving the team to implore their culinary expert for seconds. They had just finished a third helping when the PA activated.

“ _Paladins,”_ Coran said, sounding a bit troubled, _“would you mind coming up to the bridge, please? I think that you'll want to see this.”_

Glancing curiously at each other, they made their way up to the bridge, only to see a most unusual sight. Coran was sitting well out of the way in one of the defense-drone stations, munching on his sandwich while the mice sat on his console. Tilla was sitting behind Coran's usual station, and Soluk had positioned himself on the pilot's dais, his huge head right under the Balmeran crystal that powered the teludav system. Visible in the screens was a small fleet of Galra warships, and their commander was shouting threats and demands at them.

“ _For the last time, will you get those animals off of the controls and surrender properly!”_ the enraged Kedrekan Galra was snarling. _“I know that you are there, Paladins, and you and your allies will submit at once to the authority of the Empire!”_

“ _Eeek!”_ Platt replied derisively. _“Eeek eeek squeek eek phiff!”_

Tilla blew him a huge wet raspberry, and Soluk responded with something that sounded a bit like  _“BOOM-shaka-laka-grackle- **GRONK!!!”**_

Allura rubbed at her ears. “I don't have to speak Zampedran to know what that meant. How long has this been going on, Coran?”

“Last few minutes or so,” Coran said around a mouthful of sandwich. “That man there has no patience and no sense. Would you attack a ship crewed by mice and dragons? I wouldn't. Probably bribed his way into his position. We had a few of those rattling around the Castle back in the day. Absolute terrors where it came to bossing the lesser ranks about and they were all very pretty when on parade, but let them get one whiff of a real combat situation and they'd either flip or fly. This one looks like the flipping sort, and... yes, yes, there he goes. He's opened fire.”

Tilla was rumbling a low-voiced series of grunts, clicks, and crackles, and the mice were dancing on the controls; in response, the particle barrier had come up and the Castle was now moving. So was the  _Chimera_ , its own shields glowing, changing its vector and returning fire right along with the Castle. Keith blinked. “Shouldn't we be doing something?”

Coran pursed his lips, watching the mice and dragons with a critical eye. “No, I shouldn't think so. It's not a terribly large fleet and our lads seem to have everything well in hand. Paw. Claw? Whatever. Sort of reminds me of the Venob'Uplas of Genopchik. Remarkable people, very good gardeners, they were both intensely warlike and dedicated pacifists at the same time. When they weren't coaxing the most perfect blooms out of their iopari bushes, they were breeding a related species—semi-intelligent animals called Uplios—into bigger and more fearsome warriors. Quite bright creatures, quite bright indeed, they could operate simple vehicles and weapon controls with remarkable dexterity. The battles were quite spectacular.”

“But that's terrible!” Hunk protested. “I mean, breeding and training innocent creatures to fight and die for you? Not cool, man.”

Coran finished off his sandwich, burped quietly, and waved a reassuring hand as an enemy ship's engine section was blown to pieces. “Nobody died. The Venob'Upla version of warfare was basically a food fight. Iopari bushes didn't just have big, pretty flowers, but huge clusters of berries that were large, sweet, and very juicy, and the Uplios just loved hurling them at everything in sight. They might be all sticky and dripping with green glop at the end of a fight, but no one ever got hurt. It wasn't even a waste of good food, because it spread iopari seeds everywhere, and they grew so easily that even the noble classes were obligated by law to spend a certain amount of time uprooting the seedlings before they could crowd out everything else.”

Tilla  _gronk_ ed again, and this time the command ship was disabled. The  _Chimera_ was firing a waterfall of seeker pulses that were doing real damage to the swarm of fighters that were buzzing around, and faded out of sight a moment later when a squadron of those tried to attack it. Pidge sighed. “Is it just me, or are they nearly as good as we are at this sort of thing?”

Coran shrugged. “I told you that the mice were combat-certified. Must've gotten their experience in while Alfor and the rest of us were out being heroic somewhere else. The dragons certainly seem professional enough.”

“ _GRONK,”_ said Tilla, and another ship was crippled.

Lance stared at the explosion with some chagrin. “You mean that we could have asked these guys to hold the fort for us at any time? Why didn't they tell us?”

“You didn't ask.” Coran leaned back comfortably in his seat. “And, of course, the dragons have a better view than the mice do, being bigger and having more eyes and all that. Tilla's a very good Captain, wouldn't you say? Better than some I've had to train, that's for sure.”

“ _Gronk,”_ said Tilla. _BOOM,_ went another warship.

Allura heaved a sigh and rubbed at her eyes. She'd known that her mice were very much a people in their own right, but they were so small and cute and fuzzy that she'd had a hard time remembering that. Still, enough was enough. Observing that most of the enemy ships had been disabled anyway, she stepped up to Soluk and said, “All right, you've had your fun. May I move us somewhere else before those people over there call for help, please?”

Soluk stood up with enormous dignity and backed graciously off of the dais, allowing her to take the helm.

“Thank you,” she said, taking up that position. _“Chimera,_ do you hear me?”

“ _I do, Princess,”_ the _Chimera_ 's voice came clearly over the comms. _“My pilot left me on 'Auto-defend' again, which came in handy. Are we leaving?”_

“We are. Please follow us to... Becerepol, I think. Pliolan Galaxy, Brocanx Sector, Quadrant Four, seventh planet out in the Zaseran System.”

“ _Acknowledged. Standing by.”_

Allura nodded, and smiled at Tilla and the mice. “If you would please lay in the coordinates?”

The mice squeaked agreeably, danced about on the controls some more, and Allura opened a portal to take them away.

Pidge heaved a long sigh. “Battleship mice. Wonderful. Next thing you know, they'll be flying the Lions around when we're not looking.”

Keith shuddered. “Don't even joke about that.”

Lance grunted sourly. “Fine. I'm done. I'm just gonna leave the job of saving the universe from the Galra to those little guys, all right? They can do all the work and get all of the glory, and I'm going home.”

Pidge gave him a narrow, sidelong look. “I thought you wanted big parades and adoring space babes. And how are they going to deal with Zarkon and Haggar?”

Lance jerked a thumb at the mice, who were trading secret handshakes. “They can throw parades for the mice, and find them some mousy space babes. As for fighting the Emperor and a crazy witch? Hey, they're mice! They can run up their pant legs, or robes or whatever and bite them on the--”

“ _Lance,”_ Keith groaned.

“Inseam,” Lance continued primly. “I was going to say 'inseam'. It's really hard to destroy other people's planets when you've got live mice running laps around your shorts, you know. Hmm. Do Galra even have... y'know, _inseams?_ Hey, Keith..?”

Keith smacked him upside the head and turned away. “I'm gonna go and get that nap in. Wake me up when the universe stops being stupid at me, all right?”

“I'll go make some ice cream,” Hunk said sympathetically. “Ice cream makes everything better.”

“I like that idea,” Pidge said. “That idea is a good idea. Can you make that orange and green swirly stuff again?”

Coran perked up as well. “And the one where you throw in the nuts and the little candied smofberry bits?”

“And the blue one, flavored with thelpa spice,” Allura called over her shoulder. “We haven't had that in ages.”

Hunk smiled. “It's good to be needed, huh? Yeah, sure, let's go make the good stuff.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone that leaves comments and kudos. They are what encourages us to keep writing, even through sucky Real Life times. Speaking of, a heads up. Now in the thick of November, we are firmly in Holiday Season, and those of you who have been reading the various authors' notes already know that I am one of the Poor Unfortunate Souls that works in retail during what is essentially an annual apocalypse. And sadly, unlike a certain fish-girl, I don't have a dangerously magical half octopus to make shady deals with in order to get out of it. (And there it is, ladies and gentlebeings, the real reason Ariel went to the human world. ANYTHING to escape Narwhal-Mart.) So updates are going to be just a little bit slow and spotty until January. We're sorry for the delays, and hope you'll stick with us anyway. Love ya all!


	15. Catching Up, Part One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *crawls out of the swamp of work and food coma, posts this chapter, slithers back into the darkness*

Chapter 15: Catching Up, Part One

 

Shiro wobbled, straining to stay balanced, but was forced to catch himself on the nearest object to hand, that being Modhri's shoulder. Modhri paused, steadied him, and listened appreciatively to the string of soldierly invective that the newly-revived man hissed out between his teeth. “Colorful,” Modhri observed. “I'll have to remember some of that. Are you sure that you don't want the cane?”

Shiro stared with loathing at the walking stick that Modhri held under one arm. The past several days had been pleasant, in a drowsy sort of way, having been spent mostly asleep while his body got used to having someone in it. He remembered, vaguely, that at least one of his team, usually Keith, had been with him the whole time, and that he'd talked and even joked with them during it, but he couldn't remember much of what they'd spoken of. His mind had cleared somewhat after the third day, enough for him to get bored of lying flat, at least, and it dismayed him how difficult it was to do something so simple as visit the restroom. It galled him mightily that he wasn't immediately able to leap up and rejoin his team. “No,” he growled. “I'll be fine. I just need more practice with these new legs, is all.”

“You'll get it,” Modhri promised him, “and you'll cuss me out for that as well. You're actually doing better than I had hoped. Now come, let's get you back to the cot—and _no,_ you don't have to lie back down if you don't want to—and I'll get you some lunch.”

Shiro rolled his eyes. “Porridge?”

“And a tanrook bun,” Modhri replied, easing him into motion again. “Lizenne thinks that your belly is up to a little caprem seasoning now. Your gut flora has had enough time to establish itself, so we're going to experiment a little.”

Shiro perked up a little at that. After five days of nourishing but nearly tasteless mush, a bacon bun sounded heavenly. “Did you have to deal with this too?”

Modhri sighed, carefully steering him back to his cot. “Oh, yes. Haggar's butchers had replaced my entire gastrointestinal system with a small, Quintessence-fueled power cell. That was part of the reason why I had gone mad—I could hear the dead people that made up the substance of that energy. A haunted house is bad enough. Try having a haunted belly-button sometime. I haven't been able to stomach either hot cereals or ghost stories since then.”

Shiro couldn't help but smile, but frowned down at his thin, undeveloped legs as he sat down on the cot, the knees showing knobbily through the loose pajama pants they'd given him. “How long will it take to bring me back up to speed? Give me a real answer this time, Modhri.”

Modhri gave him a tolerant look as he opened a small hotbox that had been set on a nearby table and handed him a fresh, steaming bun that smelled wonderful, but the heat of it stung some of Shiro's fingers a little; the left hand had no calluses yet. His tongue was original equipment, thankfully, and was perfectly capable of savoring the flavor.

“Small bites,” Modhri cautioned him. “Space it out a little. Let's not shock your belly, since wasting that bun would be a terrible thing.”

Shiro grunted, but accepted the small bowl of loathesome porridge. “How long, Modhri?”

“At least a year to full recovery,” Modhri told him bluntly. “Lance and Keith will doubtless try to hurry that along a little and who knows what the black Lion will do, but it took me a solid year to get from the state that you are currently in to the point where I could infiltrate the heart of enemy territory.”

Shiro shook his head and ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair, which they hadn't gotten around to cutting short again yet. It still felt strange to look down at his arm and see natural flesh and bone again, instead of the metal one that had been forced on him. “That's too long. I need to be able to fly as soon as possible. The team needs me there with them.”

“That's so,” Modhri said calmly, “but you've got a little more slack than you think. Your fellow Paladins have grown up a bit while you were out, and they have been handling themselves very well. Your very presence here and now has inspired them to greater efforts, as a matter of fact; Allura has spent the last two days planning to free a planet with some of our allies.”

“We have allies now? Other than the Olkari, I mean?” Shiro asked; he remembered that Pidge and Lance had tried to tell him what they'd been up to lately, but he'd kept falling asleep in the middle of it.

“Yes, although they're a bit alarming in spots,” Modhri replied and looked up at the timepiece on the wall. “Believe it or not, our sweet little Pidge was a pirate princess for several months, and some of her friends are very unusual. You're going to like Ketzewan, I think; you bold and dashing types do like to get together for a bit of bragging now and again.”

Shiro set aside his now-empty bowl and stared at the Galra man. “A... A pirate princess? How did that happen?”

Modhri gave him a sly smile and handed him the cane, along with a pair of black Lion slippers, a gift from Lance. “If you can make it to the main lounge without falling over, my friend, then she will tell you herself!”

 

Shiro was sweating with the effort, the long muscles in his legs, shoulders, and back full of that burning ache that told him that he was going to be as stiff as a plank a little later on, but by damn, he'd made it. The doors to the lounge hissed open, allowing him a fine view of his team. They were sitting around the table, along with a tall, bronze-scaled and antelope-horned alien, and sitting on the table in a shallow pot of dirt was a... a broccoli plant? A broccoli wearing what appeared to be a hand-tailored jacket reminiscent of an eighteenth-century British naval officer's dress uniform jacket, complete with ruffled cravat and decorations of rank, and speaking very much like that noble naval officer. Keith looked up at the sound of the doors opening, and his smile was like the sun coming up. _“Shiro!”_

Keith jumped up and ran over to catch him up in a hug, and Shiro couldn't help but notice that the boy had grown an inch or two, and his already fit physique had gained a good deal of muscle since the last time he'd seen him in the flesh. So much so that Modhri had to catch them both before Shiro simply toppled over backward from the force of the impact.

“Hey, easy, buddy,” Shiro said, his voice a little rough from emotion, “I'm still a little wobbly here. What have—oof!”

The rest of the team had grabbed him up in a group hug that nearly lifted him off of his feet, and a tenor voice with a definite heroic intonation to it rang out, “Ah, Behold! The Hero Returns From The Dead, And Receives The Welcome That He Is Due! Very Well Done, Sir, Considering That Your Species Is An Annual.”

“And they're mammals, not plants, Ketzewan,” the bronze-scaled alien added. “Bring him over here, Varda, I want a closer look at the man who blackened the eye of the Emperor's witch and lived to tell about it.”

“That's debatable—hey!” Shiro said as he was lifted neatly off of the floor and shuffled bodily over to the couch, where he was plopped down and a hot cup of some fragrant liquid was shoved into his good hand. Pidge plopped down next to him, and Shiro couldn't help but to stare at her in amazement. While the huge amber eyes, the impish smile, and the petite stature hadn't changed, she had muscled up as well, and there was a great deal more character in her face. “We missed you,” she said.

“I can tell,” Shiro said quietly, looking around at the others. God, they had grown up when he hadn't been looking! Hunk, if anything, was even taller, most of his bulk was muscle now, and the same could be said for Lance. Keith, sitting on his opposite side, showed an ease in this mixed company that hadn't been there before. These weren't boys and girls anymore, but young men and women. Allura hadn't changed much, except for the confidence in her eyes and the competence in every movement. “Who are your friends, here?” he asked to cover his surprise.

Pidge grinned proudly and indicated the tall, bronze-scaled alien, who was watching him with calculating green eyes. “That's Captain Tchak of the _Agent of Spare Change,_ and this illustrious broccoli is Captain Ketzewan of the _Pride of Calynx._ They're freedom fighters.”

“ _Privateers,_ If You Would,” the potted broccoli corrected, waving an admonishing leaf at her. “Both Proud Ships of the Ghost Fleet, Commanded By The Inestimable Admiral Yantilee. Are You Aware, My Good Man, That Yon Little Devil There Is The First Mate Thereof?”

“I've been told something of that nature,” Shiro replied, giving Pidge, who was giggling wickedly, a suspicious look. “I can believe it. How long have I been out, guys?”

Hunk vented a soft _hmph_ as he did the math. “Best part of a year. No, I'm wrong, a little more than a year. You kind of poofed when we fought Zarkon that first time, but we saw you, sort of, on a mind trip to the center, and Pidge spotted you once while she was dreaming--”

“--and where the heck have you been, and why? Holy crow, Shiro,” Lance said, waving his arms in confusion. “How long has it been for you?”

Shiro's brow creased as he tried to calculate that. Time didn't mean all that much where he'd been. “I'm not sure. It couldn't have been much more than a few days, maybe a week, not counting the time that Haggar had me. As for where I was... well... I'm not entirely sure of that, either. I think that I was in Zarkon's mind, which was a very strange place. You know those dreams where you open doors, and there's a whole other world on the other side of each one? It was a little like that, and there was another path back to... I think it was Zampedri, with the tall grasses.”

“Zampedri is a place of refuge,” Modhri said solemnly, “and something in Pidge knew it, and sought safety there. Shall I summon the others? Lizenne will have that tale out of you at some point, and better to do it now while you're comfortable. Zaianne will want to get to know you as well.”

“Not just yet,” Tchak said, surprising them a little, “I hate to say it, but those two ladies make me nervous, and I've had to work a little too closely with Coran lately to want him around right now. Or the dragons.”

Lance chortled. “Soluk snuck up behind him and went _gronk_ , and he puffed up like a pinecone. It was great.”

Tchak gave him a disgusted look. “Sez you. So, you led this crowd of crazy half-grown hatchlings, Shiro?”

“I did,” Shiro said cautiously, narrowing his eyes at the odd alien. “If they let me, I'll do so again.”

Ketzewan ruffled his leaves thoughtfully. “And Under That Leadership, They Came To Early Glory. Remarkable, When One Considers The Nature Of Our Foes. Have You Some Military Training, Sir? Even Now, Frost-Burnt Though You Are, I Can See The Good Root-Stock Underneath.”

_Oh, God, I'm talking with broccoli,_ Shiro thought a little desperately, and then firmly quashed that thought. The universe was being weird at him, but at least it was being equally weird to everyone around him. After all, Ketzewan seemed perfectly comfortable sitting in a room full of people who ate things that looked like he did. “I do, Captain, and was one of the best pilots in my class. I assume that Pidge told you all about our trip to Kerberos.”

Tchak gestured what was probably an affirmative. “She did. Typical Galra behavior for a patrol ship in a new System under observation. Come to think of it... yeah. Almost forgot.” Tchak dug around in a pocket and pulled out a data chip, which he flipped into Pidge's hands. “Voan Lenna was willing to take a side trip for you guys, and had a look around. Nice little solar system you guys have. Shame if something were to happen to it.”

Ketzewan humphed disapprovingly. “Tchak, Your Manners.”

“Excuse me?” Shiro blurted, even as Pidge yanked out her handcomp and slotted it in.

Tchak grinned evilly at him. “Sorry, it's traditional. I've spent the last fifty years or so being the scourge of my little section of the spaceways, and it gets to be a habit.”

“Perhaps,” Ketzewan chided, “But That Does Not Give One License To Upset One's Hosts. Please Disregard His Poor Behavior, Sir, My Colleague Here Never Learned Proper Gentlemanly Conduct. To Put It Simply, My Dear Fellow, Young Varda There—Pidge To You—Asked Yantilee To Send Someone To Check Up On Her Homeworld, And A Fellow Privateer, The Illustrious Voan Lenna, Was Willing To Do Her The Favor. I Say, First Mate, How Fares Your Home Soil?”

The others had crowded around Pidge, and Shiro craned his neck for a look as well. The shining blue marble of Earth was still there, the gleaming pearl of the moon visible as a small bright crescent to the right. In orbit around both were objects that made him blink in astonishment, and then smile in wonder. “Those are... That's an orbital shipyard, isn't it?” he said in faintly awed voice. “And those aren't Galra ships. Sam and Matt. They did it!”

“ _Look_ at those!” Hunk exulted. “Not just any sorts of ships, but really good ships, too. Nice big drive engines on those things... yeah, there are the guns. Anyone trying to attack those is going to get a nasty surprise. Oh, and look there, see those?”

He'd pointed out a group of smallish craft towing strings of modules, which made them look for all the world like freight trains. “Ore freighters,” Lance said knowlegeably, “probably mining whatever space rocks we've got whizzing around, or they've been out in the nearer asteroid belt. Wow. Those two guys must have gotten  _all_ the funding.”

Allura shrugged. “Well, when one has been very clearly informed of a major existential threat just a few quadrants over, sensible people would act accordingly, you know.”

“Not always,” Keith said darkly. “Earth's Governments aren't big on sensible. Still, that's a really good thing to see. We're going to have to visit them soon, guys, get them signed up, have them meet our allies face-to-face... Hey, what do you think would happen if Commander Iverson ever meets up with those doom moose?”

Lance and Hunk began to laugh, and Pidge let out an umistakably evil-queen grade cackle. “Oh, wow!” Lance choked out, “I want to be there when that happens! I want a picture, and then I want to frame it. I actually saw one of those things in action when we were helping to clean up after Lotor's fleet, and, and, and,  _holy crow,_ people!”

“I will make it happen,” Pidge said, the determination in her voice sending chills down Shiro's spine. “I don't know how, but I _will_ make it happen. That'll teach him to try keeping me from finding Dad and Matt.”

Shiro gave them a suspicious look. “Doom moose?”

“Hoshinthra,” Modhri murmured with a slight shudder. “An ancient race, very advanced in the sciences, and with very good reason to hate the Empire. I'm told that they look a little like moose.”

Hunk leaned down and whispered in Shiro's ear, “Evil, undead doom moose.”

Tchak nodded and made a sign to ward off evil. “Captain Shussshorim of the  _Night Terror_ has been hunting around for roughly five hundred standard years, and she's got the entire Imperial military complement of three Sectors scared spitless of her, and Lotor's fleet as well. One ship. Three Sectors. The Crown Prince. That's over six thousand Empire-owned star systems and the Emperor's own heir, pal, and in those five hundred years, not one of those garrison ships has ever landed a damaging blow on her hull. And now she's our friend. Sort of.”

“Friend And Foe Alike Are Wise To Fear Her,” Ketzewan added darkly. “Our Admiral, Thankfully, Is Not Easily Shaken Even By Such As The Hoshinthra, And Is Able To Persuade That Dread Captain To Assist Us With Reasonable Success.”

Shiro frowned. “Persuade, but not command?”

Ketzewan waved a warning leaf. “No One  _Commands_ A Hoshinthra Warleader. One Might Coax, Or Suggest, Or Even Bribe, But Never Command. Methinks The Captain Has Gone A Little Mad, But Her Courage And Skill Remain Undefeated.”

Shiro's eyebrows rose. “I would like to meet your Admiral.”

Tchak smiled. “You will. Right now, it's us and the Olkari and the Halidexans who are forming the backbone of the Voltron Alliance, or Coalition, or whatever they're going to call it. Yantilee's freed Elikonia, Walmanech, and Kemoptee, and she's got her sights set on a bunch of others. We'll need Voltron's help, though, not only to free them but keep them free—the Emperor isn't any too pleased with your crazy kids here right now. 'Specially not after this wild girl poked a couple of holes in him.”

_That_ surprised Shiro.  _“Allura?”_

“She's been black Paladin since you ducked out,” Tchak grinned at him. “Damn straight she's going to do some ridiculously heroic things. Get her to show you the vids sometime, so that you can bow before her majesty properly.”

“Tchak,” Allura chided. “I did have help.”

“Oh, come on, Allura, you were solid awesome in that fight,” Hunk said, wrapping an arm around her for a quick hug. “I couldn't have done that. None of us could. That was all you, and if those fleets hadn't butted in, Zarkon would be dead by now. Hey, let him come! We'll just stop him cold again.”

Shiro blinked. Where was the shy, timid Hunk that he had known before? “I'm going to want to hear about that. What have you all been getting up to?”

Pidge giggled. “Trouble. Lots and lots of trouble, some of it more fun than other kinds. We'll tell you everything, but not until you tell us what you did! The Lion didn't lose you, Shiro. You left the physical dimension entirely, and for a whole year, and I want to know why!”

Lance snapped his fingers. “That's right! You went off into the Great Beyond without leaving a forwarding address. How did you do that? I mean, Lizenne said that Black pushed you through time somehow, and even I know that's not possible!”

“What I want to know is how you came back out,” Keith said, nudging Shiro in the ribs with a sharp elbow. “I know enough about aetherics now to know that that's not easy. Not impossible, but not easy. Physical things don't translate through the Mindscape real well.”

Shiro might have replied, but had to stop and stare at the table. Aside from Ketzewan's pot of soil, there was a half-empty plate of cookies, and both the cookies and clumps of potting soil were starting to lift gently into the air. “Oh, Bother,” Ketzewan said, flapping his leaves impatiently. “Tchak, Calm Down.”

Tchak grunted sourly, but closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. The soil and cookies dropped back into their respective containers, and he gave them a tense little smile. “Sorry. Big witchery makes me nervous. Couple hundred years ago, we had wonderworkers too. Then Haggar and her Druids came down to have a look at them. Now we don't have any wonderworkers, or any of the allied clans that looked after 'em. My great-great-great grandmother was one of those wonderworkers, and was offworld when that witch hit, and we're pretty much all that's left of them. Too much magic attracts predators, and those make me jumpy. Even talking about it isn't good.”

“Oh, dear, I'm sorry,” Allura apologized. “Let us turn to other topics, then, shall we?”

Tchak made a negative gesture. “Nah. I won't be able to focus until I've had a little time to meditate. We've already covered all the important stuff anyway. Ketzewan, will you want to hang about and talk some more?”

The broccoloid alien sighed regretfully. “I Shouldn't. The Paladins Are Intent On Wringing Every Last Detail From Him, And That Is A Private Matter. It Doesn't Do To Eavesdrop, For All That The Gossip-Mongers Shall Castigate Me Unmercifully For Turning Down Such Juicy New Information. All The Better Reason For Doing So, Eh? I Thank You, Princess, You Have Been A Magnificent Hostess, And I Look Forward To Visiting Again; The Conversation Is Fascinating And The Refreshments Were Delightful.”

She smiled and dipped a small bow at the compliment. “Theroqua Mountain upland silt,” she said. “Would you like to take some back with you?”

Ketzewan fanned his leaves appreciatively. “Why, I Should Be Delighted! I Shall Keep It For Only The Most Special Occasions, I Assure You.”

“I'll take the cookies, if you're handing out treats,” Tchak said hopefully.

“Of course,” Allura said graciously. “Modhri, would you please get the Captain a sack of substrate from Hydroponics? From the pile with the yellow seven-pointed star on the label. Please ask the others to join us when you've done that, will you?”

“Of course, my Lady,” Modhri said agreeably. “I'll meet you by your shuttle, Captain.”

“Very Good, Sir,” Ketzewan replied as Modhri headed for the door. “My Word, He's A Good Fellow. Would That More Of His Kind Were Like Him.”

Shiro leaned his head back against the cushions as the two aliens took their leave, closing his eyes and realizing with some dismay that even that brief discussion had wearied him. Absently, he took a sip from the cup he'd been given, and felt a little better for it. The... tea, he thought it was, had cooled down somewhat, but it was still pleasantly herbal and faintly sweet, with a hint of citrus and jasmine. Earth's tea experts would be interested in this brew, and it might open up an avenue for trade. After the war was over, trade would be a major binding factor in keeping what followed it from fragmenting. Earth would be a part of that, he knew. He would see to it.

“Is he okay?” he heard Lance whisper.

“Just a little pooped out, I think,” Pidge whispered back. “I had the 'flu really bad once, and for a while, even sunlight was too heavy. This might be like that.”

“Well, being dead might be analagous to being very ill, I suppose.” Allura observed. “That's just about as ill as one could get.”

“He wasn't dead,” Hunk objected. “All right, so maybe he wasn't in his body, the brain wasn't active, and the heart wasn't beating, but we still were able to get all the important bits and put them all back together. And then some. Not dead.”

There was a snort that couldn't have come from anyone other than Keith. “Haggar's gotta be pissed about that right now. I'm still having trouble believing that we destroyed that entire level.”

Shiro felt Pidge's small hand pat his own. “Living proof right here, Keith. Like Ronok, he breathes pretty well for a corpse. We'll just feed him up, rebuild his strength, get him back into the Lion, and he'll be fine. Hey, didn't Lizenne say that she'd take us hunting? We can try him on yulpadi stew. That stuff is awesome.”

Shiro heard a group hum of appreciation; that stew must be a group favorite. “Um,” Hunk said, “Lizenne said something about making us hunting leathers. Lance, do you know anything about sewing leather?”

“Some,” Lance said, “mostly for purses. Keith, you've got a set, right? How'd she fit you out for those?”

There was a small, slightly embarrassed sound from Keith. “She's got a special scanner, and a machine that can run them up for her, 'cause she's lousy at sewing, she said. You have to be naked to get the best fit, though.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Lance gulped. “Wait, so you actually got to see them--”

“No. We did it one at a time, in private. Don't be a creeper, Lance. Besides, you were right there with me and Mom and Modhri in the hot tub, when we had Kolost and Sarell and the cubs with us. Don't try to tell me that you didn't look.”

Shiro could  _hear_ Lance blushing. “Well... uh... I was too busy with the cubs to get a really good look, and Zaianne and Sarell were all wet, anyway. Furry Galra look funny when they're wet.”

“So do you, Lance,” Allura giggled. “Especially when you're covered with mud. Coran still hasn't forgiven you for that little performance in Loliqua's garden, you know.”

_What performance?_ Shiro thought dazedly.  _And who were all those people?_

“Yeah, like he's one to judge,” Hunk said. “I actually had to go and look up some of the words to that song he sang at the party on Halidex. I'll have you know that some of the things they described aren't Humanly possible.”

Pidge snickered. “I've actually met some of the races that were in that song, Hunk, and no, no, those are not. Some of those things are pretty... um...  _sophisticated_ even for those peoples.”

“Oh, wow, so when that Hoshinthra asked you to explain them after the party--” Lance said.

“I told it to go and look them up on its own.” Pidge said firmly. “I hope that it gave Shusshorim nightmares.”

“Probably not,” Keith said grimly. “That lady has the nightmare market all sewn up. Or stuffed and mounted. Or nailed to something.”

Pidge gurgled in disgust. “Don't remind me.”

There was another uncomfortable pause that made Shiro wonder about the details. “Subject change,” Hunk grumbled. “Let's go with dressing up instead. Ketzewan said that we were probably going to have to do more of those parties later, even if we don't have to liberate someone's planet first, and some of them take fancy dress and dancing really seriously.”

Allura made an affirmative sound. “Oh, yes. There's apparently a coalition of small space-faring civilizations, ones whom the Empire has been extorting tribute from, somewhere in the Bamnapos Sector that require formal examples of such art forms from outside ambassadors. I'm told that they consider costume and dance to be some of the best ways to judge the character of a new ally. That's not uncommon, actually; Mother made sure that I was well-tutored in the art of dress and dance, and even let me participate in some of her diplomatic events. It was great fun, even that one time when the Umagromph Ambassador became tipsy, and propositioned the Quilorpt High Priest over the confectionry table.”

“Oops,” Pidge snickered. “Did that start a holy war or something?”

“That was what Mother had been dreading,” Allura admitted. “Those two peoples had been warring with each other for decades. Instead, he surprised us all when he took her up on it, right in the middle of the huppla pudding, and Mother had to shift the flower arrangements about to avoid scandalizing both of their entourages. I wanted a better look, but Mother said no.”

There was a chorus of stifled laughter. Allura giggled. “It all turned out for the best, actually. That moment of passion eventually resulted in a peace treaty between the two races, improved relations and a relaxing of tensions across a whole region of space... and one political marriage. They  _had_ been very naughty in front of witnesses, after all, and therefore they had to be wed. They were very happy together, Mother said.”

Hunk sighed happily. “That's nice. I wish they all could turn out that way. Either way, that sounds like fun. I'm no fashion plate, but the dancing... oh, hi.”

Something very large went  _snort_ right over the top of Shiro's head, blowing his hair into his face. Sensibly, he held very still while the dragons gave him a good sniffing, and smiled to hear the familiar delicate sneezes and high-pitched, little-girl giggling. He remembered that visit to Zampedri vividly, and still wondered exactly what Alfor had been trying to tell them. One of them licked his ear. Probably Tilla, who was a bit more affectionate than Soluk was.

“Up already, is he?” another familiar voice said critically. “It's a tad early for that. Could catch something nasty that way. Why, when Alfor got himself all banged up after one of his missions—all the way out to Greppleplanc, I believe, very odd place, very remote—he absolutely insisted on being up and about hardly a day after he'd gotten out of the infirmary so that he could attend a Court function with his wife. Did all right there, but he contracted a case of barvus pox that laid him low for a month. Had to let one of the trainees fly the red Lion, and he hated every minute of it.”

“I'm not worried about his physical health, Coran,” Modhri replied, “not with so many professionals on board. What worries me is emotional stress. He needs to be close to his team in a familiar place, and he needed to get here on his own two feet. He did it, and if I have to ferry him up to the hot tub in a wheelbarrow for a nice warm soak, I will do that.”

_A hot tub?_ Shiro thought.  _Since when did we have a hot tub?_ He shifted a leg surreptitiously, and his muscles informed him that yes, a hot tub would be wonderful. In fact, hot-tub technology should be a prerequisite for inclusion into the ranks of modern civilization.

“I've been there,” an unfamiliar woman's voice concurred, and he felt five fingertips, callused but warm, stroke his cheek. “I know the pride of a wounded warrior very well, and how it can drive a person to rash acts, and the price that those actions tend to exact. Open your eyes, Shiro. I would meet my eldest son properly.”

_Son?!_

“You weren't kidding about that, huh?” Keith asked.

“You've called him your brother at least twice in my hearing, Khaeth, and I don't have so many sons that I am willing to turn down the chance to adopt another. You aren't asleep, Shiro, I can hear your heartbeat, and I know the difference between sleeping and waking rhythms.”

_Oh, God, yes she would. That's Keith's mother, a Blade of Marmora. A Galra._ Shiro opened  _one_ eye.

She was standing right in front of him, wearing trousers and tunic rather than her Order's armor, and he could see why Keith's father had fallen in love. She had given her son her fine, graceful facial bones and the large, wide-set eyes, although they sat rather differently in the long Galra face. She was taller than he was, her hair a shoulder-length flood of dark amethyst, but her smile was very like Keith's. The lean muscularity of the long torso and limbs gave her a grace that spoke of lifelong training and a high grade of skill, and it was a moment before Shiro could find his voice. “Pleased to meet you,” he managed, holding out a hand.

“As am I,” she said, grasping that hand and giving it a friendly little shake. “We've waited a long time for you, young man, and I only wish that I had found my son sooner. I thank you for looking after him, when his father and uncle had died.”

“My pleasure,” Shiro said, smiling at Keith. “He's a good kid.”

“He is,” she said, and the pride in those two words made Keith blush. “I am very proud of him. You are part of what made him so fine; would you mind being adopted?”

Shiro reflected for a moment on what his own parents would have to say about that, then snorted a laugh. “My father would probably be upset—he's very traditional—but I'm past caring. Sure.”

The woman smirked at him, looking more like Keith than ever. “And your mother?”

“Mom's been a science fiction fan since birth,” Shiro replied. “She'd jump for joy to find out that her stepsister was a space alien.”

Keith's mother laughed. “Very well, then, I will try not to bully you too much, you're too old for that. I will see to it that you will regain your strength quickly and well, and will help you regain your warrior training. I have that right, as your adoptive mother.”

“Zaianne, wait, won't Kolivan object?” Lance asked.

Zaianne tossed her head, her expression haughty, and Shiro now knew from whom Keith had inherited his pride. “He knows better than to argue with me. Khaeth has taught me the techniques that he himself was taught; Shiro will show me the techniques he knows. I will drill Shiro in both, and if he happens to observe me at my own training sessions... well then.”

“Well, then,” Shiro echoed, aware that this meant something more to her than it did to him. He glanced at Keith and said, “I've just let myself in for a whole lot of trouble, haven't I?”

Keith grinned. “Only a little. I like it, and she's a really good sparring partner.”

Hunk patted Shiro's shoulder. “You can't ask for better physical therapists, man. Zaianne and Modhri had us back on our feet in great time after Haggar hit us with that big hex--”

“She _what?”_ Shiro demanded.

“Well, that was after we'd saved Kolanth's life--”

“Who?”

“Well, that was after we stole a starbase--”

“Hunk...”

“And that was after Allura, Pidge, and Lizenne turned into a dragon and wrecked half of the Center--”

“ _Hunk!”_ Shiro snapped, deflating his friend a little. “One thing at a time, and in order, please.”

The doors hissed open again. “Not until I've had my turn, you don't,” Lizenne said. “Sorry I'm late, but the benilps are spawning in the envirodeck, and I had to make sure that they didn't foul the waterways. I want that yulpadi to still be edible when we catch it.”

Shiro looked up at the tall Galra woman as she approached them; she hadn't changed at all, he was pleased to see—so much change in himself and in his friends had unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

“What's going on?” Hunk asked.

“Benilps are a type of Zampedran freshwater fish. When they spawn, they produce a very nasty toxic substance to coat their eggs with, in order to make sure that they don't all get eaten. This toxin is usually diluted to harmlessness in a natural waterway, but the envirodeck is a closed system.”

“Why do you have them in there anyway, then, if they're that poisonous?” Keith asked.

“They're a vital part of the ecosystem,” Lizenne replied. “They eat things that would otherwise overpopulate and crash the river's ecological balance, and quite a lot of things eat them, Tilla and Soluk included. Zampedran herbivores actually prefer to drink from the spawning pools in order to absorb some of that toxin, because it makes them taste bad. Since a large number of them give birth around spawning time, it also gives the young that little extra bit of protection, and helps them build up a resistance to that and other poisons. Dragon venom is partially derived from it as well. Clever, yes?”

“That's the great circle of life talking, all right,” Lance agreed. “What happens if we try that? Would it help us resist Haggar-poison?”

She shook her head. “Sadly, no. It's far more likely that it would destroy your kidneys and liver. I won't even wash in a river during that period because it makes my fur fall out, and  _yes,_ I did find that out the hard way. Good day, Shiro, you look reasonably intact.”

He smiled and sipped his tea. “Well, I'm not dead. That helps, although from the hints I've been picking up, things have been a little crazy. When did you and Modhri come back?”

She sat down across from him and picked a rogue cookie crumb off of the empty plate. “Very shortly after you left. Zaianne here had found us on Zampedri, and she quite properly requested that we bring her to meet her son. We were more than a little surprised by Voltron's achievement, and by your disappearance. Do you remember us coming to look for you?”

Shiro leaned his head back against the cushions again, staring into the middle distance as he sorted out his memories. “Yes. I'm... not sure when that was. Time and space don't mean the same things that they mean out here in the real world, and can get all jumbled up together. You were... You were all like the dragons, but made of light.” He paused a moment. “You bit the black Lion's tail. He's still annoyed about that.”

There were stifled snickers around the room; Lizenne smirked. “He shouldn't have stood in my way. I'm aware that he was protecting you somehow, Shiro, but I don't know why. Kindly tell us.”

Shiro nodded, flexing the fingers of his right hand absently. “I'd been having dreams. Strange ones, not like the flashbacks from the Center's arena. Some of them started coming true in real life. Coran did tell us that premonitions weren't uncommon in Paladins, but this was something else again.”

“That's so,” Coran said. “Not uncommon at all. As a matter of fact, it was unusual to find a trainee who didn't have the occasional frighteningly accurate hunch. There was one fellow once, a candidate for the green Lion, who managed to channel it into predicting the outcomes of sporting events. Made a killing at the betting office before his superiors caught up with him.”

Shiro shook his head. “This wasn't anything like that. I saw us all dying. Over and over again, in the same sequence, night after night for over a week.”

“You told us about those!” Pidge yelped, “Just after Lizenne and Modhri left—the ones where I had gone missing, and I showed up again as a... oh, wow. Oh, wow, Shiro, it almost happened. It _would_ have happened if you hadn't punched Haggar out! Holy crap, Shiro, was that what this was all about?”

Lizenne rapped a knuckle on the table. “You will describe that dream to me this instant, and leave out no details.”

Shiro did so to the best of his ability, and Lizenne was rubbing a frustrated hand over her eyes by the end of it. “And none of you saw fit to mention this to me.”

Hunk shrugged. “We didn't know that it was important, and we kind of forgot about it after, well, after everything up to losing Shiro. Sorry, but where we come from, dreams aren't really taken all that seriously.”

Lizenne grunted in disgust. “I keep forgetting that your people have abandoned aetherics, or never had them in the first place. I really must look into that, for if the latter was true, then you six should not have the talents that you have now. Dreams, my dear nephew, are the medium by which the intelligent mind intersects with the Mindscape. Glimpses of the past and future may be obtained through dreams, as well as little glances at other worlds, and even alternate realities. Very occasionally, someone with latent aetheric talent might pick up the past echoes of possible futures, and interpret those as warnings. Most tend to be very vague. Sometimes, rarely, they are terrifyingly accurate.”

Shiro stared at her. “You mean... I can tell the future?”

“Yes. You're an Oracle. Time,” Lizenne said with a shrug. “Time is the one element that none of the others may act without. Time must pass in order to allow _anything_ to happen. Everyone is a time traveler, going forward at a steady pace of one second per second throughout their lives. While it is possible to move around it, thus enabling faster-than-light travel, one cannot move backward or forward in it on this plane of reality... unless one leaves it for another, where Time does not have so tight a grip. Wormhole travel is one of those methods, sidestepping time and space to punch through to where and when one needs to be, reducing to seconds a journey that might ordinarily take thousands or even millions of years. Around and behind it, see? Very much like a stardrive. For an aetheric practitioner, moving between planes is usually only possible to do with one's mind, and even then, it's difficult to consciously direct, requiring much patience and focus. I've always been a hasty sort, which makes it very difficult for me to get even a hint of future events. Moving a physical thing into the Mindscape requires an extraordinary amount of power. The black Lion is apparently oriented to Time, and it has that power. You were able both to see, and to travel a little way forward, so that you could prevent a disaster.”

“Not all that far. Maybe only a few minutes. Maybe less.” Shiro rubbed at his forehead, where an ache was threatening to take hold. “Just enough so that Zarkon's killing strike missed. It was while we were fighting him. He was piloting some sort of huge battlesuit, powered by Quintessence, and he was already loaded with more. He and I made contact with each other through the Lion-bond, and fought in the mindscape, even as we were fighting in reality. Somehow... for one split second, just one tiny fragment of time, the two planes were one, and I stole the bayard back. The moment that it was in my hand, I understood the dream. I had to go into the Mindscape all the way and prevent certain things from happening, or we would all be dead by now.”

Zaianne frowned. “I wonder... In your visions, the Castle was alone, correct?”

“Yes,” Shiro said. “Is that important?”

“I'm not sure,” she glared thoughtfully at the empty cookie plate. “What, exactly, were the tasks you performed on the Mindscape?”

Shiro sighed. “First and foremost? I had to keep Zarkon out of commission. It wasn't all that hard. He was furious that I'd taken the bayard, and even angrier that I'd dodged him, and he's not used to not getting his way. I hid in his memory, and he was so busy hunting me through there that he stayed flat for, well, for long enough.”

“Wait, you were actually playing cat-and-mouse through his life story?” Pidge said, amazed. “Wow. I'm surprised that you didn't get lost in there, too. That guy is as old as Human civilization!”

Shiro nodded. “That made it easier. There was so much of it that even he didn't know how much he'd forgotten. It's all still there, but the filing system breaks down after a while, I guess. I don't remember much of it myself—I had my mind on other things—but a lot of his memories are very similar to each other, especially after he established his claim on the throne. History really does go in cycles, and after a while, he just didn't care enough to fight it. Zarkon  _can't_ care anymore. There is a huge, gaping hole right down at the bottom of his heart where something big took a bite out of him thousands of years ago, and it hasn't healed yet.”

“The Lion,” Lizenne murmured. “Voltron is a weapon of war, but it is ultimately a defender, and was made to protect those who cannot protect themselves. History tells us that he used Voltron to destroy those who had killed his homeworld, but it went beyond that, didn't it?”

Shiro shuddered, remembering the grisly scenes from around that time, and the incredible losses that Zarkon had suffered. “Yeah. He lost everything, guys. His entire family. His whole world. Most of his people. Everything. He... he didn't take it well, and he was determined to wipe out every single person involved and then some, and he led the Paladins. Alfor and the others tried to talk him down, but you can't talk down a rage like that. Zarkon forced them through the Lion-bond to take Voltron out on an extermination rampage. They got the cabal that was behind the destruction of Golraz and most of its people, and then he turned his fury on the planet that they'd been based on. He scorched the whole planet bare. Billions of innocent people died in that attack. He burned two more cities on another world and might have fried another, but Black wasn't having any of it, and when he tried to force the black Lion, Black tore most of the Lion-bond out of him, and refused to let him fly again after that.”

“Oh, that's not good,” Coran said grimly. “That explains a lot. That has happened only once before, with the red Lion, as a matter of fact. The first red Paladin, actually. Very difficult woman, very hot-tempered, very judgmental, downright vengeful in spots. An excellent warrior and the best fighter pilot that Altea had ever produced, but she didn't play well with others. They'd given her the Lion because we needed that kind of expertise at the time, but some people should never be put in positions of power. Went right to her head, so it did, and when she took it a bit too far, Red took steps. She was devastated, purely devastated, and committed suicide not two weeks later. I just wish that she hadn't done so in public, with two hundred pounds of blastite explosive to see her off. They had to turn a rather large part of downtown Tolua City into a memorial lake, just to find something to do with the crater. The red Lion was always a bit chary of her pilots after that.”

“What was his relationship with Haggar, I wonder?” Allura asked.

Shiro sat back, his expression perplexed. “They were having an affair, back in the beginning. She was ambitious, and beautiful, and very interested in the Lions and the sciences that had created them. He was young and proud and unattached, or sort of. His father had arranged for a very nice young princess for him, but she didn't like Haggar much, and had told him to his face that as soon as they were married, Haggar had to leave. Zarkon had been avoiding the whole dynastic thing for years by throwing himself into his work as a Paladin. He did love Haggar, when he was still able to love anything, but she wasn't Galra. She couldn't give him an heir, and even if she could have, his people wouldn't have accepted her or the kid. His planet needed the political ties that would have come from the arranged marriage. The Colonies were being forced to pull together to defend themselves against what the Homeworld was up to, and her family could provide protections that Golraz just didn't have. Their princess was willing to go along with it out of a sense of duty, but the marriage would be purely political. There wasn't any real feeling there.”

“Jasca said as much,” Allura murmured. “Oh, dear. And after that?”

Shiro sighed. “Haggar couldn't give him children, but she could extend his life. He'd given her everything she needed to study Quintessence, and how it could be used to power or change things. It changed them both. Something happened in her lab, something that Zarkon didn't understand, but it sank its hooks into both of them, and suddenly two legendary heroes had become monsters. It really is addictive, everybody. Worse than fentanyl or meth or even surge. If you take in too much, you go berserk. If you pull too much of it out of a world, it dies. There are whole quadrants where nothing survived their endless hunger for more, and the whole region around the Galran Core Worlds has been pretty much stripped bare, except for Zampedri and a few of their more important allies. I saw it happen again and again and again—they send out fleets to search for new living worlds, conquer them, and then strip them of everything of worth before sucking those worlds dry. If there are natives and they object too strongly, Zarkon sends out the extractors and drains the planet all at once. Nothing matters to them but power; power, and reclaiming the Lions.”

“Why the Lions?” Hunk asked.

“They're Quintessence-powered, too,” Shiro replied grimly, “but they're alive, and keyed into elemental forces that are integral to the universe itself. They can sort of... I don't know, tap into those primal forces somehow, accessing the flows of life force directly. Haggar tried to explain it to Zarkon once, but he didn't really understand much of the technical details.”

Lizenne hissed. “Voltron may be used as a conduit, you mean. When all the major elements combine, they become the very substance of  _Tahe Moq._ There is no upward limit of the power it can channel, so long as its Paladins may bear that kind of load. And that is another reason why live pilots are so necessary: by your very nature as fragile creatures of flesh, you act as a braking system, to force the Lions to hold back so that they do not harm you.”

“Like resistors in a circuit board,” Pidge said. “That's amazing. And the bond we have with them makes them less willing to take drastic actions, unless...”

“The only proper sacrifice is sacrifice of self,” Modhri said gravely. _“Willing_ sacrifice. It must be that way, or Voltron is nothing more than an overlarge killing machine.”

Shiro nodded. “Yes. I did that, and the only thing that kept me from getting lost in Zarkon's memory was the bond I had with Black. He... well, part of him was stuck with me there, in the Mindscape, and I had to use that bond to pull out long enough to send you guys home when you came looking for me. I'm sorry, but I had to stay until I found Pidge. The Lion helped me find my way out into the grasslands, finally, which was a relief after all of those scenes of conquest, but Pidge was lost somewhere out there, and Haggar was hunting her. Huh. Coran, did Zarkon ever visit Zampedri?”

Coran sat back, stroking his mustache as he searched his own memory. “Once. Just once, I think. It was already a proscribed planet back in those days, with only a few small Galra clans permitted to visit a few times a year, and my Grandfather, of course, who had a special permit. That's right. Castoff dragon scales, hantic tea, tovvi shells, shed tambok fangs, talvic spice, k'thang berries, gwaspar, purlox, loppo nuts, phax, urx, dilnak, and knoot. Very rare items, very expensive, and impossible to get or to grow anywhere else, even now. I checked. Alfor managed to get himself marooned there without his Lion once, and Zarkon had to go and fetch him, since the others were off on other errands. They never talked much about what happened down there, but it left an impression on both of them. Even after the bruises had faded, I mean.”

“It's that kind of place,” Shiro said softly, “he never quite forgot it. By the time that I finally found Pidge, it was almost too late. I'd made plans, you know, tried to figure out how best to rescue her, but all I could think of doing when I finally found her was to beat Haggar's face in. It seems to have worked.”

“You saved everything, Shiro,” Pidge said, wrapping her arms around as much of him as she could reach. “If you hadn't landed that punch just when you did, there wouldn't be a Ghost Fleet right now, at least three planets would still be enslaved, another would be being stripped right now, we'd all be dead, and Voltron would be in the hands of the bad guys. I'd say that it was worth it.”

“It was,” Shiro murmured, suddenly very tired.

“How did she pull you out?” Keith asked. “I'm pretty sure that you didn't just walk out of the back door.”

Shiro snorted. “I wish. Zarkon had cornered me right near the place where the Lion had torn into him, and then everything went weird. The... the whole world inside his mind changed shape, and opened up at the top, and she reached in with an arm that was bigger than a Lion. She snagged me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me right out of one universe and into another. It felt the way you would think being pulled through a sieve might feel like, if that sort of thing could happen outside of a kid's cartoon.” He shuddered, remembering that bizarre, half-electric, half play-dough sensation. “She had a bunch of Druids with her, and there were big spinning purple crystal things, and strange glowing symbols all over everything. They caught me in a bubble, and I couldn't feel the black Lion anymore, or any of you, and then... well, Haggar took that punch I gave her out of my hide. One skin cell at a time.”

They drew in closer around him, which comforted his raw nerves somewhat. “We got through to you in the end, though,” Keith said quietly. “Through teamwork, and through the Lions.”

“You did,” Shiro whispered, sagging a little. “You have no idea how good it felt to hear you calling, and to be heard. Even at the last, when all hope was gone, I knew that you would come for me.”

“You would have done the same for us,” Lance said, frowning worriedly at Shiro's weariness, and then reached out to press one palm against Shiro's chest. A moment's concentration removed the fatigue poisons from Shiro's blood and eased a little of the stiffness from his muscles. Shiro gasped at the peculiar sensation, blinked, and looked up in surprise. “How... how did you do that?”

Lance gave him a slightly embarassed smile and rubbed roughly at his own arms, as if chilled. “It's a long story. Modhri, he could really use that hot soak right now, and—brrr! So could I.”

Zaianne smiled. “And so might we all. I can think of no better place for an adventure tale than a nice steaming tub.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some days, you pilot a giant awesome black space cat. Others, the universe makes you talk to broccoli. Life be like that sometimes, Shiro.
> 
> I know I say this often, but a big thank you to everyone who leaves kudos and comments, and an even bigger THANK YOU to everyone for being so understanding about the slowed updates. We love you guys.


	16. Catching Up, Part Two...With Dinner and a Movie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *runs around in circles, throws this chapter onto the site, runs away screaming like the Jingle Bells From Hell are after me*

Chapter 16: Catching Up, Part Two... With Dinner and a Movie

 

Zaianne was very right, he thought some considerable time later. It was astonishing just how much he had missed, and how much they all had grown, learned, and achieved. After listening to all of that, it felt very good to lie stretched out in the shallows, eyes closed and up to his nose in warm water while he soaked both his aching muscles and his aching head. He was still just a little uneasy about the mixed company, although he found the fact that Galra smelled like dogs and spices when wet to be absurdly comforting. So was the cheerful bickering of his team, and the occasional sprinkle of flying water drops whenever they splashed at each other. They'd grown together, he mused sadly, and they'd done it without him. He had an awful lot of catching up to do, and not just physically. It could wait, though, just for a little while. For right now, for just this little slice of time, he could simply relax and feel safe. He reveled in it, a warm, comfortable, dreamlike sensation that he hadn't experienced in far too long. It felt so good to lie there and let his mind drift. There was a faint murmur in the back of his mind at that thought, a soft, deep, wordless rumble that he nevertheless perceived as, _of course you are safe now. We all love you, and will keep you from danger until you are strong enough to face it again._

_Do you?_ Shiro thought, a little surprised.

_Of course,_ said a medley of voices that were almost, but not quite like those of his team. _You are a part of us now. You will lead again, and you will learn to seek out the best paths. You have been given this gift._

_What about Allura?_ Shiro asked, a little worried; he did not want to have to dispute her rightful place as Paladin.

_Allura has her own gift, and her own path. She may fly when it is right for her to do so, but she will have other duties that you cannot perform so well._

_I do not mind if you share,_ said the black Lion.

Shiro sighed inwardly.  _Zarkon did._

There was a feeling of sorrow, tinged with regret. _I made a terrible mistake,_ the Lion admitted, _we have all made mistakes. We will remedy them, although the damage caused by those errors will be a long time in healing._

_This is only the start, isn't it?_ Shiro asked. _It's not enough to get rid of those two monsters. Cleaning up after the Empire falls is where the real work begins, and that may take another ten thousand years._

_We will have help,_ the black Lion reassured him, and then withdrew, taking the others with him.

Shiro's breath hissed between his teeth, and he wondered at the twists of fate that had led up to this.

Hunk's large hand patted his shoulder, disturbing his thoughts. “You okay in there?”

“Hmm?” Shiro said, opening his eyes to see Hunk looking down at him, concerned, while in the background Keith and Lance were comparing the development of their abs while the girls looked on and laughed. For a moment, he wondered if he'd dreamed his conversation with the Lions, and then gave up on that. His dreams were often all too real. “I'm fine,” he murmured a little blurrily, “this is a nice tub. As soon as I can get the change-of-address forms from Earth, I think I'll move in.”

Hunk puffed a laugh. “Good luck with that. Earth's, like, a million lightyears away.”

Shiro grunted. “Fine. I'll just stay here and colonize it until then. Stake my claim and all that.”

“Dude, you're going to be one big prune by then,” Hunk pointed out.

“But I'll be a _happy_ prune. With colonial rights.”

“Point,” Hunk conceded, “but you're gonna be a hungry one. Pool rules, Shiro. Nobody's been allowed to eat in the pool since Coran dropped one of his sandwiches in here. Something in it reacted badly to the bath oils, and it wound up jellying down the entire tub.”

Shiro groaned as his stomach reminded him of how much energy he'd spent that day, and on one tanrook bun and a couple of small bowls of space porridge. “Did you have to mention food? Now I'm starving. Wait, he jellied the tub?”

Hunk nodded solemnly. “Scout's honor, boss. The whole tub was full of yellow slime, and I'm not even going to say what the waterfall looked like.”

Shiro looked at the waterfall, where their three Galra friends were sluicing out their fur. Lance was right; furry Galra really did look odd when soaked to the skin. He tried to picture that feature flowing with yellow goo, and didn't much like the image. “Ugh,” he grunted.

“Yeah. Cleanup was not fun.” Hunk said sourly. His own belly rumbled, and he called over his shoulder, “Hey, guys, who wants dinner?”

There was a general reply in favor of that idea, and Modhri pulled himself out of the pool with a smile. “I'll go and get it ready, then. Will you all be happy with the items on file in the kitchen, or will you want to come with me, Hunk?”

Hunk considered that. “I'll come. You need to tell me what Shiro can and can't have yet, anyway.”

Shiro sighed, seeing more porridge in his future, but conceded the necessity for caution and silently cursed the witch and those Druids that had dismantled him so thoroughly. He wondered, vaguely, what had happened to the rest of his original body, and then abandoned the thought as a depressing one.

“We'll help,” Lizenne said, and she and Zaianne climbed out of the pool as well. “I have some ideas about improving the flavor of that porridge, now that he's able to handle better than bland stuff. You should have heard Modhri complain about it when he was recovering! Coran, will you want to come along and make something more to your taste?”

“I should be delighted,” Coran said, wringing out his mustache. “Perhaps I'll be able to enlighten all of you as to the proper method of constructing a sandwich.”

“Not if it fills the tub with gunk again,” Hunk said darkly as he and the rest of the advance party adjourned. There was an odd whooshing noise from the other end of the room that lasted a few minutes, a good deal of distant laughter, and then he heard the door hiss open and shut.

Pidge gave Shiro a measuring look. “Think you'll be able to make it down to the dining room, Shiro?”

“Not sure,” Shiro admitted, and tried to sit up. He was no longer terribly sore, but his muscles had gone on strike. “Um. No. I don't hurt much, but...”

“Right,” Keith said, helping him sit upright. “I stashed a hover-pallet in the closet over there. Guys, I'll need a little help getting him into the drying tube—oh, better check the lint trap first.”

“I'll get it,” Allura said, splashing up the pool's steps.

“And I'll check the tub's filter,” Pidge added. “I wonder if Queen Emaltris's guests ever dropped that much hair in the bath?”

“Knowing my family, it's very possible,” Allura called back as Lance and Keith eased Shiro to his feet. “At least all we have to worry about is fur—my goodness, rather a lot of fur! My great-grandmother loved making friends, so there would have been scales, feathers, whiskers, quills, and any number of other things turning up in the screens. Will you need the brush, Pidge?”

“No, Galra fur felts up pretty well. I've got it all.” Pidge ambled past with a double-handful of wet purple fur, and when Shiro looked up at Allura, he saw her wrestling a football-sized clot of similarly-colored fluff out of the service panel of a large and worryingly-familiar machine. He'd had bad experiences with glassy tubes big enough to hold a person. As he watched, Pidge deposited her hairball in a wastebasket and stepped into the tube, bracing herself against the side as a tame whirlwind dried her out and puffed up her hair into an absurd dandelion. Allura handed her a comb when she came out and took a turn in the dryer, which had the same result. Shiro couldn't help but snicker at the sight of the huge creamy-white puffball that it turned her head into.

“Yeah, instant 'fro,” Lance whispered, “we've never figured out how to make it stop doing that. It's okay, a few minutes with a comb fixes the problem. You're going to want to cut yours short again, right?”

Shiro pushed his overlong forelock out of his eyes again and nodded. “And fairly soon. All of this will be hard to fit under a helmet. My armor. You said that you were able to save that, too?”

“Yeah,” Keith said, “Nasty picked it up on the way out of the lab. It'll save us having to have the Castle make you a new suit. Speaking of that, none of your clothes are going to fit. Think you can run him up something, Lance?”

“In no time flat,” Lance replied proudly, easing Shiro toward the drying tube, now that the girls had gone to the dressing rooms to change out of their bathing suits. “We could probably stop by my sewing room on the way to dinner and make you something that'll fit for now. I've got the fitting scanner running properly, and it even talks to the sewing machine now. Hunk had to act as a mediator the first time, but it works great.”

“I'd like that,” Shiro said, looking down at his regrettably slender body. He hadn't been this skinny since middle school. “It's only temporary, but I can't just hang around in my pajamas the whole time.”

“Then it's a date. Let's just get dry, now...” Lance replied.

There was enough room for all three of them in the tube, and Shiro couldn't help but tense and shiver when the blast of warm, dry air hit him. _No strange fluids,_ he reminded himself as he willed his pounding heart to slow down, _no feelings of drowning,_ _no blackouts, no pain, no waking up and finding things... different._ Well, one difference. When the wind died down, he opened his eyes to find them all sharing a single hair explosion. Lance snickered, Keith grinned, and Shiro chortled; they all looked absolutely ridiculous, and the laughter they burst into a few seconds later was wonderfully cathartic. So much so that it took them a while to get combed out and dressed again, and he felt much better for it when they sat him down on the hover-pallet. By then, Pidge and Allura had rejoined them.

“Just gonna make a quick detour,” Lance told them as they pushed the hover-pallet out into the hall, “Shiro needs pants that fit.”

“I'm sorry, I hadn't thought of that,” Allura apologized, “How silly of me! The same thing happened to us after Haggar's hex. At least I had a few old skirts that could be cinched in a bit. Will this take long? I really am very hungry for some reason.”

“Storytelling will do that. It's the harem flashbacks, right?” Lance grinned and ducked adroitly away from the swat she aimed at him. “It'll just be a few minutes. Altean sewing technology is great.”

The lift took them down several levels, and a few minutes of walking brought them to a broad door; Shiro recognized it as one of the lesser storerooms that all the levels had, spaced at regular intervals along the halls. This one, however, had a surprise lurking inside it, and Shiro was forced to throw himself flat on the pallet when Lance opened the door. Something pale and solid-looking fired a salvo of glinting needles at them before rocketing out of the room at head height, making a sinister clicking noise.

“Oh, crud, it got off of its leash again, didn't it?” Keith said, ducking reflexively.

“He's just bored,” Lance said, dancing away from the group, his eyes on their attacker, “we've been kind of busy lately, and I haven't been able to give him enough work to keep him happy.”

The mysterious object dive-bombed him, firing another spray of needles. Lance avoided those with an acrobatic ease that had Shiro staring at him in amazement—where had Lance picked up that kind of coordination?—and leaped at his foe, tackling it to the floor.

“Lance,” he said, feeling rather boggled. “Is that... a sewing machine?”

Lance grinned at him. “Only the best sewing machine in outer space. It's a long story, and it's all Pidge's fault.”

Allura humphed softly, giving the furiously clicking machine a critical look. “You haven't removed your evil influence from it yet, Pidge?”

“Nope!” Pidge said with an unrepentant grin. “I can't. It would be murder. It's alive now, like Rover was. Just be glad that I didn't do the same for those gladiator-bots in the training deck. You've been teaching it manners, Lance. It hasn't sewn your pant legs together in ages.”

“Yeah, he's getting better,” Lance said, rubbing the machine's forward needle array with an affectionate hand. “You don't really mean to staple me to a wall, do you, Marco? Such a good little sewing machine! I bet you want to make a whole bunch of nice clothes for your new friend here.”

The sewing machine stopped struggling and began to make a contented _whirr whirr whirr_ sound. Shiro put a hand over his face, not quite able to believe what was happening. “It's purring, isn't it?”

“Yeah, he's a sweetie,” Lance said, getting up. “Just grab those needles, guys, and welcome to my palace.”

_Palace_ was a bit of a misnomer, but  _emporium_ wasn't too far off the mark. A large scanner stood in one corner next to a large and rather frightening array of machines; there was something sort of like a cross between a spider and a barber's toolbench, a peculiarly-shaped and heavily-padded thing with four long mechanical arms that ended in triangular plates, and what seemed to be a sewing station with a slot in the center where the machine itself hooked in. Aside from that, a huge worktable held pride of place in the center of the room, and there were shelves and shelves and shelves on every wall, all crammed full of fabrics, notions, and tools of the tailor's trade. There was even a drafting board on the other side of the room for those special projects. A long rack of finished garments stood to one side, all in Lance's size.

“Wow,” said Pidge, “so, this is where you sneak off to in the evenings. Nice.”

“It helps me relax,” Lance said, placing his sewing machine back on its special table. “Taking over this room is okay, isn't it, Allura? After a while, my room just wasn't big enough.”

“I can hardly object,” Allura replied, scanning the room with fascinated eyes. “I wasn't even aware that the Castle's store of raw fabrics was still good.”

“Most of it wasn't,” Lance admitted, “some of the stasis systems had conked out ages ago, and one went all weird and melted everything together. The auto-weaver's still good, though, and can run up bolts of prime stuff in hardly any time at all.”

Allura cocked him a considering look and examined one of the shirts hanging from the rack. “I might have you make a few little things for me now and again, actually. You do very good work.”

He grinned at her. “What's it worth to you? Nah, forget it, the first one's always free. Shiro, just stand under the scanner there so I can get your measurements.”

Bemused, Shiro complied, heaving himself to his feet and positioning himself under the rather odd-looking machine while Lance bustled around him.

“Yeah, that's good, just hold still for a minute,” Lance said, activating the machine and frowning at the readout. “Yeah. We'll want it just a little loose, so you can grow into it... nice wide sleeves... pockets, of course, gotta have pockets, and in a fabric that's soft enough for comfort, but sturdy enough for physical therapy. Maybe some better shoes for that, too, you're not quite up to boots yet. Okay, you can sit back down now.”

Shiro sank gratefully down onto the chair that Pidge shoved over and watched in fascination as Lance trotted over to one of the fabric shelves and began pulling out this bolt and that, running skilled hands over his selections and frowning in concentration. He eventually chose a couple of bolts of black fabric and fished a pair of what looked to be sneaker soles out of a handy bin, throwing in a length of elastic for good measure. “Since we're in a hurry, we'll go with one of the stock patterns. Number Sixteen, Marco, Variation Two, medium-weight fabric, extra reinforcing around the pockets, rear seam, and inseams.”

“ _Whirr,”_ said Marco, rotating its needles around to a particular gauge and loading an appropriate thread.

Lance measured out and cut two lengths of fabric, then gathered both up in his arms along with the elastic, and smirked at his audience. “And now, the magic happens. Check this out!”

He then threw the wadded-up ball of cloth at the machine array. It was caught by a small tractor beam that brought it to the padded device, which turned out to be an ironing station that had the pieces smoothed out in a trice. They were then passed to the spidery-looking thing, where the bladed arms snipped out the various pieces necessary, and then passed it off to the sewing machine itself. “I love this thing,” Lance said happily as the sewing machine stitched and overcast with astonishing speed, passing some of the parts back to the ironing station for a quick press now and again. “I've always really liked doing the design work best, and Marco and his buddies here take all of the drudgery out of actually running them up. I'd ask for a setup like this for Grandma for her next birthday, but my cousin Racquel would probably steal it and teach it to quilt.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Allura asked curiously.

Lance rolled his eyes. “You've never had to deal with someone who's got Obsessive Crafting Syndrome, have you? Even the charities around where we live hide when she walks by, but the fabric store loves her, and she's won first place in the World Quilting Championship three times. I've got more quilts at home than I have socks. An array like this would probably allow her to quilt the whole world. She'd do it, too. Racquel told me once that it was her ambition quilt up whole airship canopies, if she could afford one of the really big industrial sewing machines. She really wanted one, but her husband said no.”

“Spoilsport,” Shiro said, although the thought of a fleet of quilted dirigibles floating through the skies was not one that he really wanted to contemplate.

“Yeah, she had to settle for making hot-air balloons, parade balloons, and hang-gliders,” Lance agreed, pulling out a bolt of something like canvas. “Okay, Marco, reconfigure for footwear. Casual slip-ons, Type Six, heavyweight coarse fabric... hmm, Variation Three. We're definitely going to want good arch support.”

_Whirr,_ went the sewing machine as parts of the array transformed into new and frightening shapes, _click-click-click-ommminnnous-hummmm._

In only a very short time, Shiro found himself redressed in a T-shirt, slacks, and a pair of shoes that fit surprisingly well, and it made him feel less like an invalid and more like himself. Lance touched a few controls, patted his sewing machine fondly, and shut the array down. “Okay, I've got all that on file, so I can make you up more whenever you need them. Now, let's go and eat!”

 

The table was already set and there were heavenly smells emanating from the kitchen when they arrived, as well as the sound of laughter and cheerful conversation. Shiro sniffed appreciatively at the air, and found to his surprise that there was a definite hint of fresh green peas and peanut butter among the other fragrances. “No, seriously?” they heard Hunk say over the ferocious sizzling of what had to be a hot wok. “He wouldn't dare.”

“Did, too,” Lizenne answered, “a heaping spoonful, launched right into my left ear. It took some considerable work to wash the stuff out of my fur, but I didn't mind. It was how he proved to me that he not only had the strength and coordination to move on to the next stage, but that his digestion was just fine, thank you! It was very funny and we still laugh about it, but I'm not willing to repeat the experience. That's why we aren't making any tonight, since Shiro might have the same idea if we don't let him have what we're having. He should be fine. Pass the kessip sauce, if you would, this needs just one more dab. Zaianne, are those vedras chopped up yet?”

“Yes, and I've finished grating the olesh,” Zaianne replied, “the rolls are almost done, too. You had better move over, Celenast, I'm going to need that spot in a moment. Modhri, I know you have the terwilla, just toss it over... thank you. Excellent aim, as always.”

“Better'n some I've seen,” said a voice that Shiro didn't recognize, and yet sounded slightly familiar. He'd tried to remember his three weeks as a bucket of aetheric semi-fluid, but the impressions from that time were hazy at best. All he could truly recall was a feeling of soul-deep relief that he was no longer in the hands of his enemies. The voice continued: “Now, if you want to see real precision, look no further than my Granny. She'd trained herself to be as good with her toes as she was with her fingers by the time she was my age, and by the time I left, she was prehensile both above and below. There used to be bidding wars for her services among the burglary teams until her knees went bad on her, and when the authorities finally did catch up with her, she picked the lock on her manacles with her toenails! She was out and away over the rooftops in no time, and those big clumsy jailers tried to chase her and fell off. I'm sorry, folks, but you fuzzy purple bullies aren't all that good at rooftop chases. Especially not in neighborhoods where they grease the guttering and roofpeaks every Twilsday. Present company excepted, of course.”

“Who's that?” Shiro asked.

“That's Nasty, our villainy teacher,” Keith replied. “Remember? Pidge suckered him into staying with us for a while so that we could learn a lot of dirty tricks. It's actually come in handy a few times.”

“That's right,” Shiro said, leaning to one side so that he could see into the kitchen. “It sounded like you're having fun with him.”

Sure enough, there was an Unilu busy in the kitchen, his hands seeming to twinkle as he helped Coran to construct something like an enormous club sandwich. Pidge grinned and stepped into the doorway, hands on her hips and eyes full of mischief. “Hey, Nasty, are you done poisoning the soup yet?”

The narrow-eyed, olive-tinted alien scowled at her, looking very offended. “Soup? _Soup?_ You uncultured little gorp-roach, I would never lower myself to poisoning the soup. That's a cliché so big and overdone that it amazes me that anyone even bothers to make soup anymore. For shame!” He sniffed and picked up a handful of wooden skewers. “It's the sandwich that I'm spiking, see? Okay, Coran, go long.”

“Right-o,” Coran replied, picking up the platter that the sandwich was resting on and retreating to the far side of the kitchen. “You may fire when ready, sir!”

Nasty distributed the skewers evenly among his hands, and then hurled them at the sandwich with a terrifying scream; Coran didn't flinch, and a second later the sandwich was nailed neatly together by ten long spikes. Not to be outdone, Coran catapulted the sandwich into the air even as Zaianne tossed Nasty a quartet of long knives; he caught them with ease, and with another banshee shriek, the sandwich was sliced to pieces in midair. Modhri, turning away from a salad that he was seasoning, caught the platter that Coran had slung across the room like a frisbee and used it to catch each and every skewer with ease, then set them aside on a counter so that he could sprinkle both dishes with herbs.

Pidge crossed her arms. “Showoff.”

Nasty sneered at her, but his eyes were glinting with amusement as he set the knives down on the counter. “Are you kidding? That was barely passable. These knives! Alas, I am reduced to using kitchenware. Kitchenware! Ronok would swat my knuckles with a spoon if he ever heard of it. They are unworthy even to steal. Sorry Hunk, they're great for cooking, but I couldn't hold up a convenience store with them if I tried. I'd be laughed right out of the express lane.”

“Why aren't you using your good ones?” Pidge asked, as if she didn't know.

Nasty took the cue with the ease and grace of a professional actor. “Are you mad? I have none. None!” he flung his arms out in a dramatic display of pathos and collapsed backward into Coran's arms, eyes wide and beseeching. “I am bereft! I am stripped of my pride! I hope that dead guy over there—hey, dead guy, you're looking better—is properly appreciative of my sacrifice. My blades! My very best blades, raddled and corroded from stabbing monsters, unfit even to spread mettic paste upon toast!” his tragic voice deepened to a conspiratorial whisper: “But lo, even as I lost my last edge, I laid hands upon the perfect weapon. The knife of dreams, the rarest and most singular of blades, the tambok-fang knife. Precisely seven _thila_ of rarest ivory, worth more than diamonds, corresponding with the Seven Gods; precisely twenty _olets_ long, corresponding with the Twenty Festivals; no less and no more than five _teli_ wide, corresponding with the Five Seasons; a blade so sharp and strong that nothing could daunt it!”

“It was perfect!” Coran gushed, tears streaming from his eyes.

“It was glorious!” Nasty cried.

“It was magnificent!” wept Coran.

“A sacred object in its own right!” Nasty declared. “Holy Colleeren the Blade Dancer Herself would smite someone to possess it, and for a short time I had that honor... but alas, I am once again in despair, for it was taken from me.”

“No!” Coran gasped, wrist to forehead in a dramatic display of emotion.

“Yes! Torn from my very hands by the murderous oppressor, that evil witch!” Nasty said, pointing an accusing finger at Lizenne, who was calmly stacking things that looked like eggrolls on a platter. “Fie upon thee, harridan! Termagant! Chinchilla! Fie upon thee, I say, and may you come to regret your thieving!”

“You stole it from me first, you little miscreant,” Lizenne replied mildly, “I only retrieved what was mine. If you are very good and help us get all of this onto the table, then I might just consider making you one.”

“Seriously?” Nasty said hopefully in a much more normal tone of voice, but had too much drama going on to let it go at that. “Behold! The light of that rarest and most precious of emotions, Generosity, may take root in even the hardest of hearts, for lo, I am once again given hope! To hold so grand a weapon in these four unworthy hands—eep!”

“You only get that chance if you get that sandwich to the table, you silly fool,” Zaianne said, tugging at his ear. “And get the juice pitcher too, you little reprobate, you've got enough hands for it.”

Nasty humphed and threw in one last effort, dragging himself dejectedly out of Coran's embrace. “Alas! See how my greatest desires are used to make a mere kitchen slave of me! The bold marauder, reduced to fetching the drinks of the master race—hey!”

Pidge had caught him by the other ear. “You've been watching those stupid vid dramas again. Where have you been, anyway? We haven't seen you for nearly a week.”

Nasty jerked out of her grip with a glower in her direction, but reached for the sandwich platter. “Lawsy, you're a tough crowd. What's a guy gotta do for a little appreciation around here? I've been out with Ketzewan's crew, picking up the gossip. Ronok says 'hi', by the way. If you get the juice pitcher, I'll give you the message chip he sent along, instead of challenging you to the usual duel for it.”

To Shiro's surprise, she actually paused to consider it. “Okay,” she said, fetching the juice pitcher from the cooler. “I'm going to be too full after dinner to stab you properly. Lance, Keith, get Shiro to the table, and then help with the greens and stuff, okay?”

“Allura, Coran, please get the dragons' shares out of those two crates I brought along,” Lizenne called over her shoulder. “I've already got their bowls set out, and don't give them more than two each of the lelosha wraps, no matter how prettily they plead. The chithral leaf in the wraps is harmless, but it gives them gas if they have more than a tiny bit. Dragons should gronk out of only one end, in my opinion.”

There was an offended _gronk_ from the dining room that sent the two Alteans laughing toward the back of the kitchen, and Shiro found himself being shuffled gently into a chair for the second time that day. He had missed this, more than he had realized—the comfortable bustle of a family group preparing for a meal, and he had to fight down a lump in his throat and an emotional prickle at the corners of his eyes. In the meantime, he distracted himself by watching Allura and Coran heave huge slices of lean, purplish meat into the dragons' bowls while Tilla and Soluk looked on with regal approval.

“This should be about the last of the ornipal meat, isn't it?” Coran asked. “Bit of a shame, that. Good stuff.”

Lizenne nodded, sitting down at what was definitely her accustomed place at table. “Alas, yes. We're all looking forward to that yulpadi, which is about prime now. Do we have anything absolutely unavoidable going on tomorrow? I'll want to get you fitted for your leathers, and see whether or not you can learn how to use a bola-whip as soon as possible.”

Allura frowned thoughtfully as she settled. “I don't think so. It'll take a little time for our allies to move themselves into position; Ketzewan did say that the liberation of Kemoptee was a very ambitious one, and for all that it was successful, they are having to move with care. Yantilee is clever, but very cautious.”

Shiro stayed quiet and listened to the conversation as it flowed from one subject to the next, concentrating primarily upon what landed on his plate: none of it was porridge, and all of it was good. Hunk, who had never been clumsy in the kitchen, had really expanded his repertoire, and he could practically feel his stomach rejoicing. He ate slowly, though, savoring every last bite; he knew as well as anyone else here did that too much, too soon, could lead to unpleasantness later. So, he sipped a glass of juice that tasted like nothing on Earth and kept his eyes, ears, and mind open, watching his team and tablemates as they discussed current events.

“Latest gossip says that the Emperor's laid up, although not for much longer,” Nasty said, nibbling at one sandwich skewer. “That magic spear of yours gave him an infection that tried to turn him into a puddle of goo, and Haggar dusted some poor bastard to get the mage-energy to clear it up. What the _clorch,_ Lady?”

Lizenne nodded. “It's not unheard of. Even as Haggar and her Druids can go right through armor with their claws, leaving a poisoned wound, a bone spear can do the same, although the infectious agent is somewhat different. There are a number of bacterial and fungal diseases that will have the same effect.”

“We will have to move quickly to stay ahead of him then,” Allura said, frowning, “and we mustn't forget that Lotor is still hunting around. I wonder what he's been up to.”

Nasty shrugged and reached for another ladleful of steamed greens. “We don't know. None of the Fleet ships have seen him, and Shussshorim's been pouting about that.”

Pidge frowned, then made a face. “I just tried to imagine a Hoshinthra pouting. Yuck. Have they been able to keep her from running off to look for him?”

Nasty nibbled the last of the sandwich off of its skewer and shook his head. “Nope. She checks in regularly, though. Ketzewan's First Mate says that she's what won us the battle for Kemoptee. She was out somewhere else for most of it, but she blew in like a thunderstorm right over the enemy line, and broke it like it was glass. They panicked, the Fleet didn't, and that's all there was to it.”

Hunk shuddered. “Were they able to get to the survivors before she did?”

Nasty nodded. “Our guys have been making a point of that, and Shussshorim knows it. I think that she and Yantilee have an agreement about that sort of thing. Shussshorim can blow up as many ships as she likes, but we get the leftovers. You don't need to worry about those, by the way. Yantilee and the Halidexans have been keeping the officers for questioning and ransom, but the soldiers get sent home, and _yes,_ Doc's in charge of the interrogations. He won't let anyone hurt his patients.”

“They'll remember that,” Allura mused. “They'll remember, and perhaps that will help us in the future. Do you think it might, Zaianne?”

Zaianne waved an uncertain hand. “Possibly. The officers will be disdainful of such kindly treatment for the most part. You don't move up in the ranks by being nice, after all. If we see any future aid, we will see it from the families of the common soldiers. Thousands of families, who were spared the pain of losing their sons. The common Lineages have little power on their own, but band enough of them together and we might be pleasantly surprised. As events progress, we may wind up adding some of the outlying Galra colonies to the Alliance.”

“Really?” Keith asked, very surprised. “You'd think that they'd fight us even harder than the Core Worlds.”

Modhri shook his head, his expression grave. “Not necessarily. The further from the Center you go, the less important your colony is, unless the planet is very rich in resources. There are hundreds of marginal worlds that have been deliberately set up for the purposes of the Military; they are so resource-poor that their main export is soldiers. When they are no longer good even for that, they—and their populations—are abandoned to their fate.”

Lance choked on his drink. “That's terrible! That's like what the big coal companies did to the mining towns back home, when the mines played out. Whole communities just sort of withered away.”

“It gets worse,” Lizenne said quietly. “The Gantarash and other predatory peoples watch those failing worlds very closely, waiting for the Garrison fleets to leave. And when they do... well. Those worlds will be glad enough to accept any protection that will keep the maneaters and slave traders away.”

Allura shuddered. “I will keep that in mind. How vile!”

“Got that right,” Keith said grimly, and then cocked a curious look at her. “Hey, wasn't that one guy you met on Sowirra from one of those?”

Allura nodded. “Torozan. He did mention that his homeworld—Lonoko, I think—was a poor world, and that he had been forced to sign up in order to earn enough money to help his family. We sent him home with plenty of that.”

Nasty tapped the table with one finger. “Lonoko's not the only one of those out in that Sector. There's a bunch of them, even as far out as Pilsaster—Morzut, Ansaska, Valenth's only just barely hanging onto its Garrison right now, Jirvax, Punlac, and Rociaport.”

“Rociaport?” Hunk blurted in surprise, “I've been there, and it's only just been settled!”

Nasty shook his head. “For now. Calomyx is richer, and that's a penal colony. Once Rociaport's mineral deposits are gone, that's it. The Military will take all the recruits it can get until the population thins out too, and then they'll up ship and leave. If the Gantars don't get the colonists first, then their neighbors will. I give them another hundred years or so, maybe a hundred-fifty at the outside, but no more than that. Probably a lot less, if the early prospecting teams fudged the geological ore-scans.”

“Not cool,” Hunk said. “I put a lot of work into that ticket arcade, and I don't want some jerk busting up the place. Will we have to worry about other trouble from that direction?”

Nasty scratched his nose thoughtfully. “Not sure. It's all Fringe area once you get out past Pilsaster, and we leave the exploration to the Galra, so that if they do find something ugly, it eats them first. Sorry.”

“Not at all,” Zaianne replied. “Continue.”

Nasty gave a relieved nod, and did so. “The one Fringe race we are familiar with is the Ortakans. Technologically, they're about on par with the rest of us—as far as we know, anyway—and they'll trade a little at the dark ports. Slave trade, mostly. They've got customers back home who really like Galra, and they pay in precious-metal ingots and gems. They've also told us that there's a whole other Empire out there; the Chashmara Partnership, they call it, and it's said to be big and tough enough to take on Zarkon and his crowd without raising a sweat. They just don't care enough to do so.”

Shiro humphed. “That might be worth looking into later on,” he said. “Even if they aren't interested in what we're doing, it would be wise to be on good terms with them, just in case. Something wrong, Coran?”

Coran was nibbling on one thumbnail, looking troubled. “Just thinking that that sounded a bit familiar, is all. Chashmara. Where have I heard that one before?”

Pidge blinked. “Maybe Voltron went there, once? I mean, if the Ortakans have been buying and selling people for long enough, maybe they got their hands on somebody's VIP.”

Coran snapped his fingers. “You're right. That was well before I was out of training, but that's exactly what happened. It was a Duchess, actually, the Grand Duchess of Moselby Gwass, a very influential Preocorna official. There was a plot to unseat him--”

“Him?” Keith asked.

“Oh, yes,” Coran said. “'Grand Duchess' was the rank. The actual gender of the person holding it didn't matter as much as the title did. He had managed to dodge two assassins, three coups, a lynch mob, and a giant lizard—the man never really had the knack for making friends—but his downfall came when he accepted a drink from his cousin, the Viscount of Uslen Pascar. He should have known better, for the woman was well-known to be among the world's best biochemists. Next thing he knew, he was sitting in a stock cage, headed for parts unknown.”

“If he was such a jerk, then why did the Voltron team bother to go and rescue him?” Lance asked.

Coran leaned his elbow on the table, chin in hand, and filched another lelosha wrap. “Politics. The black Paladin at that time was also a Preocorna, and her people had strong ties to the Duchess's family. When they came back, they had not only the Duchess, but a wild adventure tale of an encounter with a whole other undiscovered interstellar civilization that was so improbable that nobody believed them. Three ruling races, they said, working together so closely that they might have been hatched from the same egg! Big blue serpents that hid themselves behind curtains, talking rocks, and huge spotty men with heads like a borbrun's, only less savage. Oh, exploration teams were sent out, all right, but they never found anything. Those that came back hadn't, anyway.”

“Huh.” Hunk said thoughtfully. “Has anyone else gone looking since then?”

Nasty waved a cautionary hand. “A few. They don't get far. The Chashmarans are very big on border security, and you don't get past their patrols if you don't have a permit. The Ortakans can go in and out, they've been Partnership members for ages, but they don't invite anyone in who isn't merchandise. Trying to fake or steal a permit doesn't work, either. It's been tried, and those who did try, they never came back. Even the Gantarash don't go out there. I don't recommend it unless you don't have any other choice.”

“We'll be careful,” Shiro said, noting that Voltron had gone and come back more or less unscathed, although Coran's stories weren't necessarily to be taken at face value. “It probably won't be necessary if—oops!”

He'd been twiddling his knife in his left hand, and had forgotten that that hand wasn't as coordinated as it should have been. The knife flipped into the air like a leaping salmon, coming down point-first into a square of baked paslen not six inches from Nasty's lower-right hand.

The Unilu stared at the vibrating utensil, and then picked it up very gently, paslen and all. “They weren't kidding about you needing some hand-eye coordination training, were they? Here's your knife back, pal, and get a good night's sleep. You weirdos don't have enough hands to start with, and going around with a bad one is dumb. I'm going to get you working on that tomorrow morning, and I'm going to keep you at it until you'll _wish_ that your hands will drop off so that I will leave you alone!”

Shiro smiled mildly at him, which made the Unilu steam. “Happy to hear it. I'll be there.”

“Good,” Nasty said sourly.

Shiro nodded, leaning back in his chair. He was getting drowsy, he realized; a result of his first day out of bed and the pleasant weight of a full meal in his belly. Lying down would feel good, although...

“Need to turn in, Shiro?” Lance asked.

“Soon,” Shiro replied, unable to suppress a yawn. “Not really interested in going back to the infirmary, though.”

“Your own room, then?” Allura asked.

Shiro thought about it. It was a familiar room, but it didn't feel quite right to him at the moment. Too cold. Too empty. He'd been lonely, he realized, ever since he'd had Black launch him that crucial few moments ahead, into the Mindscape. “To tell you the truth, I'd rather... I don't know. The best place that I can think of is the dragon's nest on the training deck, preferably with all of my team there with me.”

“Yesss!” Pidge said, surprising him a little. “Pajama party!”

Allura smiled eagerly. “That would be lovely. Tilla, Soluk, do you mind?”

Tilla chirped graciously and Soluk made an agreeable rumbling noise.

“That's a great idea,” Lance said, grabbing his empty plate and jumping up. “Let's just get this all cleaned up fast, and get our jammies on—Hunk, do you still have that movie file? Don't answer that, I know you do.”

Once again there was a whirl of activity, and Shiro found himself being pushed along on the hover-pallet toward the lifts. He was too tired to feel frustrated at his inability to walk there unaided, and was feeling too good to object to their care when they lifted him off of the pallet and onto one of the stolen mattresses. That would change soon enough, he knew. He'd always been a difficult patient; his time in the military had contained its fair share of knocks and incidents, and each time he had driven the medics wild with his refusal to stay in bed. This time was a little different, having taken what could only be called mortal wounds; he _had_ been dead, and now he was not. He found that a little disconcerting, but that was as nothing to what some folks back home would have to say about it. Shiro sighed, and wondered how Sam and Matt were getting along.

His thoughts were interrupted a little as Hunk propped him up on a drift of pillows and draped a couple of blankets over him, and then trotted off, ostensibly to get himself ready for bed. The others flitted off as well, leaving him alone for the moment. It was restful more than it was lonely here; he could smell the faint scales-and-sage scent of the dragons, and that was comforting, and there was a... a source of warmth nearby, although not a physical one. When he closed his eyes and tried to feel for it, he perceived a shimmer of gold in the main training room a few doors away. _That was from the mind trip they went on, trying to find me,_ he thought, and marveled at the effort that it must have taken.

_These efforts were not in vain,_ the black Lion reminded him, although the great beast's tone was a little sour, making Shiro smile. He remembered the dragon-pack's arrival, so close and yet so far, and of how nearly things had come to a real fight.

_You could have just let her call me out,_ he thought to his Lion,  _I had a pretty good lead on Zarkon just then. It wouldn't have hurt to have taken a few minutes to tell them what was going on. You don't like Lizenne much, do you?_

The Lion growled irritably.  _She is dangerous. I cannot see what she will do next. I cannot wholly trust what I cannot see._

Shiro puffed a brief laugh. _Welcome to my world, Black. All of us puny mortals have to figure each other out, bit by bit, and we'll never know each other totally. Why can't you see her next moves?_

The Lion made a worried noise in the back of his mind. _The witch's aura is hidden from me. More so now than when you first met. I am... not sure why. It is not of her doing._

Shiro's eyebrows lifted in surprise. _Is it something Haggar did?_

_No. There is no evil in it. Whatever has laid that cloak over her future actions has its own agenda, however, and one that it will not share. We must take care._

Shiro nodded slightly, hearing the faint patter of hurrying slippers flapping in the hall outside. This was an old soldier's ingrained caution, that lifesaving distrust of the unknown that had averted so many disasters in the past. _She wants Haggar dead,_ he pointed out, _and Zarkon as well, if she can manage it._

The Lion responded with a wave of old sorrow. _He and I were very close, once. The Zarkon I knew is already dead; that young hero perished in the same fires that destroyed his world and his people. What inhabits his shell now is a horror, and it is one that I had a hand in creating. You have seen this._

_Yes,_ Shiro thought, wincing at the memory of the vast wound in Zarkon's soul. _We all make mistakes. Well, we'll have to wait and see, I suppose. I'll take any help that I can get, considering what we're up against. You might want to consider this—if you can't see what she's up to, I'll bet that Haggar can't, either. Haggar's caused a lot of damage over the last ten thousand or so years. Maybe there's something out there, something completely other than us, that wants that witch out of the picture as well. Lizenne and the others have been a huge help, but they're not part of_ our _team._

The Lion paused, a little uncertain. _No... but we, and they, are Of The Pack._

There was something very significant about that, and Shiro didn't know enough even to guess at what that was. There was only one possible response to that statement, and he spoke it aloud, though softly. “And the Pack is as one.”

His team came trundling back into the room at that point, Pidge with her laptop, Hunk with two huge buckets of what looked to be buttered popcorn, and the rest with eager expressions. The next two hours were spent in a haze of mild delight as he lay there with Pidge on one side and Keith on the other, nibbling popcorn and what, amazingly, seemed to be peanut-butter cookies, while a half-trained young Jedi, a rogue princess, two sarcastic robots, a dashing smuggler and his tall hairy buddy teamed up with tribal teddy bears to defeat the despotic ruler of a vast interstellar Empire. They did have to pause once fairly early on in the movie to let Keith smack Lance a few times with a pillow for transgressions against the spirit of the heroine, an act that touched off a brief but wild pillow fight, but it was altogether worth the disruption to see the team playing with each other like that. All of them sang along with the victory song at the end of the movie as well, although Allura dissolved into hoots of laughter halfway through it. This was the classic version of the movie, quite without the later add-ins, and while the song's lyrics might have been nonsense words to the Humans, they definitely meant something in Altean. In Altean, the song did not describe joyful triumph, but rather the fun that could be had in a mud wallow, and her description of that had them all laughing as well.

They began dropping off to sleep soon after that; Lance first, snoring softly in a drift of pillows. Hunk next, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. Then Allura, cuddled up between them and perfectly happy to be there. Pidge next, with a good grip on Shiro's shirt, possibly to make sure that he didn't vanish into dreams again. Keith alone stayed awake, his head resting against Shiro's shoulder. They lay in silence for a time, listening to the others breathe. Shiro felt Keith grip his left hand and squeeze gently. “Missed you,” he said, very softly.

“Yeah,” Shiro said, just as softly. “I know. Believe me, the feeling is mutual. It's good to be back.”

Keith scrubbed at one eye with the heel of his hand. “How are you feeling?”

There were layers to that question, and Shiro heard them all. “Pretty good. Tired. A little sore. Well-fed. Very relaxed. I'll sleep well tonight.”

Keith shifted uneasily. “No bad dreams?”

Shiro mentally translated that as _no flashbacks?_ Haggar and her little helpers had treated him very badly in the days after his initial capture, and his injured psyche had peppered him with the fragments of it at random, and often at extremely inconvenient moments. She had hurt him again in every possible way after she'd pulled him out of the Mindscape, and this time he remembered every detail. It wouldn't surprise him in the least if he had more of those flashes, and even perhaps night terrors as well, except... he paused, testing that idea, but that tense, itchy, blocked-off area in the back of his mind that he'd lived with for so long was quiescent for the moment. Not gone, but not active either. He was safe here, and knew it, but he also knew that it wouldn't take much to set it off again. He would have to learn how to control it, was all, and there were people here who could teach him how to do just that. For the moment, however, he could feel Black guarding him against the evil residue of his recent past, and knew that his rest tonight would be entirely untroubled. “No. No, I don't think so. Not since you guys brought me back. Not tonight either, I think. I feel better inside than I've felt all year. The control hexes that Haggar planted in me--”

Keith's breath hissed through his bared teeth. “She'll never hex you again. I made sure of it. Anything she fires at you will just burn up, and then you can punch her in the other eye.”

Shiro chuckled, clenching the fingers of his right hand, feeling the skin on his knuckles stretching, the muscles and tendons moving smoothly over the bones, and the strong pulse of blood through the veins. He hadn't expected to feel that ever again, and he reveled in it now. He probably would for the rest of his life. “That's the best gift anyone has ever given me. Thanks.”

Keith sniffled, and Shiro lifted his left arm and wrapped it around Keith's shoulders, ignoring the burn of effort in his undeveloped muscles as he let his friend unload some of the emotions he'd been bottling up. He knew very well what he had been to this lonely young man over the past several years, and he silently cursed the fates that had dealt Keith so many undeserved blows. “How have you been?” he asked, once the muffled noises had died down.

Keith heaved a shuddering sigh and relaxed, getting his own grip on Shiro's shirt. “We've been doing okay, mostly. I wish that you'd been with us when Kolanth brought us that second stockpile key. Maybe we could have avoided the booby-trap that Haggar set for us. _You_ don't get overconfident.”

Shiro snorted a faint laugh, remembering some of the scrapes that he'd gotten into as a new recruit, and later on, in the arena. “I had a lot of trouble learning that lesson, believe me. All I have to do to remember not to get cocky is to go and look in a mirror,” he tapped the darker streak of scar tissue that lay across the bridge of his nose. “How do you like having your mother back? After that visit to the Marmoran base, I couldn't help but wonder.”

Keith heaved another long sigh. “She's the best. I can't say that it was worth the wait and she won't either, but she's here now, and I need her. She needs me.” He snickered. “When Bantax tried to convince her to leave the Castle the first time, she slammed him down onto the floor and almost dislocated his arm. Kolivan didn't argue with her. She's not a helicopter mom, or a tiger mom, really, but she's always _there.”_

“She's a Galra mom,” Shiro said, half-jokingly. “Big and fierce, but she lets you run loose.”

Keith yawned. “Yeah. I really wish that you could have met Sarell's cubs, though. They were really cute.”

Shiro hummed, recalling the stories they'd told him earlier, and the pictures that Pidge had shown him of the fluffy purple babies. “You've come to grips with your Galra side, haven't you? Any trouble there?”

Keith shook his head, his own expression a little surprised. “Not really. The others... they accept it. They really do. Allura's got no problem with it and the others haven't even joked about it in ages. Having Mom around really helped, and the cubs...” He trailed off, his expression softening.

The cubs had left a deep impression on Keith, Shiro could see. For just a little time there, Keith had been an older brother, and that had eased and centered that troubled spirit somehow. Galra, he had been informed, had very powerful instincts where family was concerned; stronger even than Humans had. When there were cubs around, even those who were completely unrelated to them would immediately start acting like family. Shiro could see why; with a gender disparity that big, every child was precious. Keith had been so very alone, far more alone than a fullblooded Human could ever be. Speaking of aloneness...

“Hey, Keith?”

“Yeah?”

“Zaianne asked me earlier if I'd seen Lizenne's ship in my dream, the one where Pidge was a Druid.” Shiro frowned at the ceiling. “Any idea why?”

Keith blinked at him, puzzled. “You said that the _Chimera_ wasn't with us in that vision.”

“It wasn't. The Castle was on its own, and Voltron tore it to pieces.”

Keith chewed his lip for a moment, frowning pensively. “I think... I think that if you hadn't gone into the Mindscape, Lizenne and Modhri wouldn't have stayed with us. They would have dropped Mom off, and then headed back to whatever they were doing out there. Yeah, that's right! She and Modhri stayed with us to help train Allura, because Black accepted her. We got called back to Arus not too long after that, where we got ambushed, and Pidge and Allura and Lizenne got kidnapped, and if she hadn't been there... you didn't see Allura in that dream either, did you?”

“I...” Shiro realized with a shock that he had not. “I didn't! I heard Coran speaking from the bridge, and sounding worried, but not Allura. She wasn't piloting a Lion yet. It was you and me and Hunk and Lance, looking around for someone... or some _ones._ We we had to go looking around that section of space, because we couldn't go anywhere else without her. The shock of seeing Pidge as a Druid overshadowed anything that might have happened to Allura. She might have been killed, or worse.”

Shiro felt Keith shudder, and did the same. They both knew what “worse” could mean now, having seen a fair amount of it up close and personal. “Shiro... Haggar would have fed her to Pidge. Or maybe... oh, crap—she might have melded her with the green Lion. Allura's a Perfect Mirror, but Haggar would have found ways around that if she'd had enough time. With Allura's talent forced into the Lions, she could have used Voltron to pull the Quintessence out of whole stars.”

Shiro hissed in shock. “And if she'd done the same to the rest of us...”

“Zarkon would have been unstoppable,” Keith said, and patted Shiro's chest. “Way to dodge the biggest bullet in the history of ever, man.”

_Is he right?_ Shiro thought, aiming the question at his Lion.  _Would everything have ended so badly?_

There was a wordless feeling of uneasy confirmation. Even if things hadn't gone as Keith was guessing, they would still have failed if Shiro had not taken that strange side trip. His temporary weakness and the disorientation of having missed a whole year's worth of development was a very small price to pay for what they had gained. He lived, and was free and among friends, and that was more of a reward than he'd had any right to expect. “I guess,” he said softly, holding both Keith and Pidge close; Pidge whiffled, made a small growly sound, and snuggled closer, pressing her face into his ribs. “Three chances. Zarkon and Haggar had three chances to take Voltron away from us. The first was during that big fight, just before I... left, when Haggar tried to drain us all dry. It might have worked if we hadn't strengthened our bonds with the Lions so much. The kidnapping was the second chance.”

“No luck there,” Keith said smugly. “The ladies totally dragoned that one.”

Shiro puffed a laugh. “So I've been told. The third was when Haggar went after Pidge in her dreams. Stopping that was the main reason that I went in there. They'll never get so close again. Who knows? Perhaps it'll get better from here on out.”

Keith yawned again, and smiled. “It has to. You're back.”

Keith blinked, sighed, and dropped off to sleep, leaving Shiro to contemplate that last statement. Simple as it was, it echoed on his mind like the footfalls of giants. He smiled. He had done the impossible for the sake of his team, and they had done the same for him. He would recover from his injuries in good time, and retake his place in the Lion's cockpit. _Let our enemies beware,_ he thought, half-jokingly to himself, _because we don't know what laws of nature we'll break next either!_

When Tilla and Soluk looked in upon them a little time later, they found the Paladins resting at their ease, more at peace in that tangle of bedding than they had been anywhere else for months. Grunting in satisfaction, they settled themselves down, head to tail with the group safely in the center. Even heroes needed protecting now and again, and Tilla and Soluk knew their responsibilities very well.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to everyone for your patience with the weird update schedule. Your encouragement helps me keep my sanity, and thus Spanch does not have to muzzle me after work in the evenings.


	17. Work and Play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new update? Only a few days after the last??? Strange times, my friends... Okay, Spanch and I just wanted to release one more chapter before Season 8 breaks all our hearts. Enjoy, and be strong on the 14th!

Chapter 17: Work and Play

 

“Here's the Librarian you wanted to see, Highness,” Lieutenant Tilwass said, waving a hand at the large and peculiar-looking Kithraxen male that stood flanked by Sentries a polite distance away. “Sorry it took so long, sir, but he'd holed up in a sub-sub-basement. These big bugs can be hard to spot.”

“I was cataloging,” the Librarian said in a scratchy and oddly resonant voice. “It must be done regularly, lest things fall out of order. I would have come if you had pressed the call-button on the desk, there.”

Lotor glanced back at an item of furniture that he'd thought was a large and rather baroque example of abstract statuary. Then again, after looking at this creature, that it might be a workstation instead wasn't too far-fetched a notion. The Kithraxen was nearly as large as the Elikonian pirate had been, and bipedal; that was where the resemblance to anything else ended. That the alien was insectoid could not be doubted, from the intricately-articulated, glossy-black chitin armor that was going gray with age, to the vestigial wings and multiple arms. The flat grinding teeth were reassuringly vegetarian, but there was enormous strength in the segmented body, even in advanced age, and the four glittering compound eyes revealed nothing of his emotions. The sash and banners that had been draped over the alien's uppermost shoulders proclaimed him recognizably enough to be the head Librarian, and that suited Lotor perfectly. The information that he wanted wasn't likely to be available to those lesser in rank.

“Do you know who I am, Kithraxen?” Lotor asked.

The Librarian turned his head so that all four eyes were centered on him, and something about that intent stare raised the hairs on the back of his neck. “I do,” the Kithraxen said calmly; there was not one ounce of fear there, nor even surprise, but merely a sort of scholarly interest. “You are His Highness Prince Lotor, currently the Crown Prince of the Galra Empire. An unusual visitor, but it is not unheard of to have such dignitaries here.”

“Is that so?” Lotor asked, a little surprised.

The Librarian straightened up slightly and indicated the vast array of data terminals that had been set out in rings under the central dome of the Library. “It is. We have had many exalted visitors. Several Governors, a number of Generals, a few of your fellow princes, and quite a lot of nobles and warlords from planets as far away as Beverenth. Even the Rogue Witch, once, before she went rogue. We are proud to be the repository of the records of every Scholar's Society on this world and numerous others, and we take further pride in offering up that information to any who might ask. It is the greatest Free Archive in this Galaxy. What would you like to know, your Highness?”

Lotor gave him a suspicious look. His search for information had required him to visit many libraries on many worlds in this Sector, and none of the librarians had been willing to share. He'd had to be very firm with some of them, and while he hadn't had to have any of them killed, he had left more than a few bleeding behind him. That this rather monstrous alien would be so forthcoming didn't feel right. “I will want confirmed data.”

“All data here, save for those subjects such as religion, legend, and the more abstruse scientific disciplines, has been confirmed as solid fact and cited by at least three respected authorities,” the Librarian said calmly, completely unruffled by his distrust. One long arm reached out gracefully and touched one of the terminals, bringing it alight. “I ask again: what do you wish to know, your Highness?”

Lotor shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, and his hand gripped his sword hilt almost of its own volition. What was it about this creature that made him so uneasy? “It is rumored that your people were created by the Hoshinthra. I would know more about them.”

“History,” the Librarian said promptly. “Yes, we are among their many children, and we served them until our purpose was accomplished, and then we were freed to find our own destiny. You are not the first to ask for that file, nor will you be the last. Having trouble with the last of the Warleaders, are you?”

Lotor grunted in distaste. “Alas, yes, as any tabloid will tell you.”

“It wouldn't,” the Librarian said with a broad gesture of distaste. “I do not read such unsubstantiated trash. Your people have been suffering her wrath for seven and a half _xishwhai,_ and many of your kind have come here looking for a way to deny her vengeance. She wouldn't have become such a problem if your sire had not destroyed her home, of course, but the Emperor does as the Emperor wills, and that is that. Here; this is all we have that is proven fact.”

Lotor scowled at the screen, carefully keeping an eye on the Librarian as he did so. “There isn't much.”

The Librarian shrugged, which was an impressive sight, him having six shoulders to work with. “The Hoshinthra were extremely secretive to all outsiders, which included their daughter races. Not out of any delusion of superiority or a belief that other peoples were unclean; they were simply busy, and did not appreciate distractions.”

“Busy?” Lotor asked. “Busy with what?”

“Everything,” the Librarian replied simply. “None of the Classes ever rested upon their laurels, as most extant peoples do. Every day, they sought to advance, and they saw to it that every generation was an improvement upon its predecessors in health, strength, and intelligence. Other peoples were less studious, and while they might pose interesting problems and possibilities, the Hoshinthra preferred to limit outside contact. As a result, little is known of them. If you wish to peruse the collected observations of the few peoples that they did do business with, touch this tab. May you find what you seek.”

Lotor glanced up at the Librarian in surprise. “Why should you say so? I am trying to destroy the last of your creators.”

The Librarian moved away with another gesture of indifference. “A common misconception. We are not the children of the Warleaders, nor of the Warriors. Those created nothing but destruction, inspired nothing but terror. We Kithraxen are the product of the Scientist Class, and your father has already destroyed those. You are not your father, and thus I have no animosity toward you.”

Lotor gave the Librarian a long, wary look. “A refreshing outlook.”

The Librarian made a chittering sound that might have been amusement, and retired to his desk, calling up his own screen of data. Since this concerned a philosophical dispute on the nature of the soul between two long-winded and long-dead scholars, Lotor turned to his own research and was soon engrossed in what he found there. Spare though the data was, it was telling. The Hoshinthra had created and released nearly a hundred intelligent races. The Hoshinthra had terraformed whole planets with ease. They could and had re-engineered whole global ecologies to suit their purposes. They had split their own people into over a dozen genetically-distinct Classes, each with their own purpose and duty, and none of the Classes were counted to be any greater or lesser in importance than the others. They, as the Librarian had said, had never stopped pushing the envelope. Their preference for cold worlds had given them an advantage, for those were far more numerous than temperate ones, and the vast majority of intelligent peoples weren't interested in planets where the water was frozen to a depth of two hundred feet year-round even at the equator. No one searched for cold worlds, Lotor knew. They were everywhere, remote and unimportant, and above all, easy to miss. So easy to miss that the Hoshinthras' nearest neighbors, the inhabitants of the second planet from the sun in the same solar system, hadn't known that they were even there until a mad explorer had gone searching for adventure out in that direction. By that time, the Hoshinthra had already established seven colonies in the outer orbits, and more in the next solar system over.

They had come late to warfare, Lotor discovered, having never competed among themselves and having been disinterested in conquest; they hadn't even entertained the notion until one of their few outside contacts had informed them of the necessity, due to an aggressive race that had raided periodically in that area. The Scientists had delved deep into their gene-files to develop a version of themselves that was far closer to the ancestral predator; not as intelligent as the more modern genotypes, perhaps, but larger, stronger, and unstoppable in battle. Since they had routinely built living brains into their starships to serve as a main computer system, it had been simplicity in itself for them to turn a reliable conveyance into a self-propelled, self-maintaining, fully-autonomous warship of terrifying power. That had been long before the Empire had discovered them, and they had improved on the original design over the years. The _Night Terror_ had been at the cutting edge of technology when Zarkon had decreed that the Hoshinthra must die, and it was no wonder that he had made that decision; the Imperial exploration fleets, even as all other aggressors that had ventured into Hoshinthra space had, had been eradicated. Lotor knew from his studies of the Imperial Archives that the extermination of the Hoshinthra had been incredibly costly in ships, resources, and lives, so much so that it had caused a serious economic recession throughout the Ausa Sector. The Empire had triumphed in the end, destroying the Hoshinthra's homeworld and every colony they could find, wiping out every Warleader save one. Just one, who had been running riot ever since, and was now a member of the Ghost Fleet.

The records devolved into accounts of that monster's exploits at that point, the narration mostly ranging from half-panicked to gibbering in terror. A few of them had been submitted by more level-headed individuals—mostly Elikonians, he noticed—that described the fighting style of the _Terror_ very well over the past five centuries. Large ships did not work well against her, it seemed, for she had the terrifying habit of crowding in so close that an enemy ship's own shields would cover her as well half the time, or foul on the Hoshinthra ship's shields instead. Smaller, faster, heavily-armored craft seemed to have a better survival rate, and the more maneuverable they were, the better. The only problem with that was that those smaller ships often did not have guns that were powerful enough to do any damage. Lotor considered that, his eyes staring at nothing that lay before him as he mentally ran through the various types of warship that the Empire's navies could offer. Something like a light cruiser, he thought, or a modified pirate-hunter, but with better cannon... yes. There was a class of ship that did indeed fit the bill; three, actually. The three most advanced grades of fighting craft in the Empire, made under exclusive contract at the Nelargo Shipyard for the Ghamparva. He smiled. Lotor had no reason at all to be fond of the Ghamparva, and having been dragged back to the Center like an errant child by a pair of their agents had not sweetened his opinion of them at all. It was time, he thought, to exercise a little princely prerogative.

There was the faint _beep_ of a communicator from the other side of the room, and a mutter of conversation. A moment later, Tilwass appeared at Lotor's elbow, looking apologetic. “I hate to have to disturb you, Highness, but we just got an urgent message from the Center. The Emperor faced off against the Paladins and came in second.”

Lotor's head jerked up, and he stared at the man in disbelief. “What? Dead?”

Tilwass shook his head. “No, still live and angry, but very sore. One of 'em stabbed him twice, shoulder and thigh, and Haggar had to kill a man to get the energy to patch him up. More to the point, the Paladins made off with one of the Ghamparva's comm stations and did something weird to it. They've been spotted up by Hoynarylup and again out by Oubrin in the same quadrant. The Ghost Fleet's gearing up to take another planet away from us, and it's possible that they've asked Voltron to help. There's more, but the message is encrypted, and it won't come through on the personal comms.”

Lotor nodded. “I've just about finished here, anyway. We will take a short detour before we head out to Oubrin, I think; I may have found something that will allow us to teach the _Night Terror_ some manners.”

Tilwass grinned. “Music to my ears, Highness.”

Lotor turned away from the terminal, pausing a moment to regard the Librarian, who was still reading his philosophical trivia. “What purpose did your people have, Librarian,” he asked, “before your creators turned you loose?”

The Librarian didn't even look up from his screen. “We had more than one. Originally, we were simple insects, developed for the purpose of tending certain valuable plants. We were developed further into gardeners, to take care of the corresponding generations of valuable plants. We were then remade into warriors, to discourage an impertinent portion of a race of aliens from attempting to damage or steal those valuable plants. We did our duty well; the impertinent ones were destroyed, leaving only the more sensible populations to breed. Our creators were deeply concerned with the concept of improvement of the species through selective breeding. It worked, and so we earned our freedom. We have chosen to become Scholars. It was a good choice.”

That little episode had been mentioned in the records he'd just read, and looking at the Librarian—even an aging, sedentary example such as this one—he could believe it. “Yes. Continue in your scholarship then, for I must engage in the art of war.”

The Librarian raised a hand in salute. “Indeed, your Highness. May what is coming to you serve you well.”

Lotor gave the Kithraxen a hard look, but had no easy reply or particular wish to demand an explanation of those words, so with that dubious blessing, Lotor took his leave. The Librarian remained at his desk, perusing ancient texts until one of the junior librarians approached. “They are gone, Senior,” she whispered, “their ships have left orbit.”

“That is as well,” her elder said, pushing himself upright and clicking the fingers of his many hands in a rhythm that would have been impossible for a Galra to follow, much less replicate. In response, a hidden panel in the desk opened, revealing a sleek little long-range communicator of a sophisticated design that would have surprised and upset the Prince very much.

“Which one will you tell?” the junior librarian asked curiously.

“Both, of course. My granddaughter out of necessity, the second out of courtesy.” He smiled a most savage and unscholarly smile. “Or perhaps it's the other way around. Regardless, they must be told.”

Long insectile fingers tapped a quick code on the controls, and a moment's wait had a familiar face appearing on the screen. _“Grandfather Zorchodric, I greet you,”_ the female said, _“I take it that he's been there?”_

He gazed fondly at his descendant, and felt deep pride in that she carried the warrior blood of the Swarm of Zor so well. “Even as They had said, Zorjesca. He has just left, off to augment his fleet with Ghamparva craft for a swifter hunt. He is determined to take the Talssenemai before she takes him.”

Captain Zorjesca chittered a laugh. _“She will find that amusing. I will pass that on to all that need to hear it. Keep well, Grandfather.”_

“Yes,” the Librarian said, closing that connection and typing in a very different one.

This call took longer to go through, and there was no image on the screen when it connected, which was just as it should be. The Person that he had just contacted had no need for images, as it did not possess eyes. It did not need them, nor did it need an explanation; Zorchodric simply stood, mind at peace, while his contact perceived him.

After a time, Zorchodric murmured, “Satisfactory?”

“ _Yes,”_ the Mystic said in its customary echoing whisper, and that was all the accolade that the Librarian needed. He closed down the comm with a feeling of accomplishment and went back downstairs to finish the cataloguing.

 

Shiro leaned back against the sun-warmed stone, breathed deep of the fresh, grass-scented air, and massaged his left hand, which ached and kept stiffening up on him. Nasty had not been joking about the dexterity and hand-eye coordination exercises and had drilled him mercilessly until he was sore from fingernails to armpit. A few cold-packs and a mild painkiller had helped with that, and now he was sitting on a cluster of boulders in the _Chimera's_ envirodeck, watching as his team underwent exercises of a different sort. Lizenne and Modhri had set up a sort of training camp not far from the envirodeck's exit and had invited him over to watch, mostly because the fresh air and sunshine, simulated though they were, would be good for him. He had to admit that it was. It was a real privilege to feel living earth underfoot again, and to look up and see something other than the plain white ceilings of a starship. Admittedly, it was an odd sort of inside-out world in here, with grassland and little wiggly rivers visible above the “sky”, but he could feel it doing him good all the same. Tilla and Soluk were certainly enjoying it. Soluk had wandered off to check the grass thickets for anything interesting, but Tilla was sitting nearby, keeping him company for the time being and watching with considerable amusement as the team tried to come to grips with both their new weapons and their new outfits.

Getting them fitted for those had been a fairly straightforward affair; the machine that had turned a pile of atinbuk hides into four sets of leather breeches and lace-up vests was definitely akin to Lance's tailoring system, although there had been a little bit of an argument about footwear. Lance had been all for running around in the grasses barefoot as their hostess did, but she had scoffed at the very idea. “Not hardly,” Lizenne had said, grabbing him by one ankle and running the tips of her claws over the arch of the sole. “You're as tender-footed as a newborn,” she had said over his squawks of protest, “and are likely to pick up all sorts of sharp objects. Pidge might be able to get away with it, having run barefoot for six months. I did so for seven  _years,_ and well do I remember how footsore I was at first, before I learned to watch where I was going!”

The new hunting gear and the sandal-like footwear fit the five active Paladins like a glove, and that was turning out to be a whole different problem; namely, in that they were very distracting. Keith was more or less used to it, having been on a hunt before, but the others were still very self-conscious about it and kept sneaking glances at each other instead of paying attention to what they were supposed to be doing. Not that he blamed them. Quite aside from the outfits themselves, which could easily have cost over a thousand dollars a set back on Earth, it was the fit young bodies they displayed in ways that their armor never could. Pidge in particular had developed curves that had surprised the boys very much, and Allura was always worth looking at.

Lizenne was demonstrating her skill with the bolas now, whirling the weighted cords above her head before slinging them at a post that had been hammered into the earth some distance away. They flew straight and true, and wrapped themselves very handily around it. “Remember,” she said sharply, “keep them above your heads at all times, and do  _not_ drop your arm until the bola is already a bodylength away! If you catch one of those weights on the back of the head, you'll feel it for a week, assuming that you don't spend that week in a healpod. Bolas are very good for capturing or incapacitating just about anything with legs; they may be used to hunt flying things as well, and can also be used to bind and hobble a captured enemy if necessary. They are incredibly easy to improvise on the fly, so long as you have something like a cord and something that can be used as weights. I once made one from kitchen twine and stale githrop rolls, and, makeshift though it was, it won me the last slice of pie. My brother might never have forgiven me for that, but it was worth it. Pidge, you first, since you've played with these before.”

Pidge stepped up, managed a very creditable whirl, and cast the bola at the pole. It missed, but practice would take care of that.

“Good enough, for a start,” Lizenne said. “Allura, have you ever tried something like these?”

Allura examined her bola curiously. “Not personally. They were not considered suitable for a Lady, but they were still used in certain parts in the world for hunting gual!suchs, large insects that were said to be very tasty when roasted.”

“Give it a shot,” Lizenne told her, indicating the pole. “Learning a new method of getting a meal is never a waste.”

Allura's shot whizzed past the pole and vanished into the grasses, but it hadn't missed by much. “Good form,” Lizenne approved. “Lance?”

Lance had also been admiring Allura's form, but not her technique, and he let out a squawk of dismay when his attempt resulted in the cord wrapping itself tightly around him. “Help!”

“Arm _up,_ I said,” Lizenne sighed. “Everybody, you may take this one opportunity to point and laugh. Then help him get loose. Keith, you'll be up next.”

Shiro smiled, and rubbed his shoulders against the stone to ease a few itches. In truth, he wanted to be among that group, learning new things and taking his lumps beside them, and he silently cursed the weak muscles that were preventing him from doing so. A soft crunch of grasses beside him and a grunt of greeting from Tilla told him that he had company, and he turned his head to see that Modhri had come to watch the fun. The Galra man nodded a polite greeting and asked, “Any injuries yet?”

Shiro flicked a hand at his team; Keith's bola had just bounced off of the ground several feet from the pole. “Just a little bit of wounded pride, which heals quick enough. Is everything all right out in the real world?”

Modhri nodded. “We'll be meeting up with the Fleet, or part of it, in a little time. Kolivan is evidently putting Jasca through her paces, spreading misinformation and picking up all sorts of secrets. He wants the Empire's forces too muddled to bother us when we go after the next target. I'm told that the Beronites are on the move as well, preparing for their own rebellion. When that strike hits, Zarkon will lose control over an entire region, one with a great many very rich planets.”

Shiro nodded, then heard a yelp of distress; Hunk hadn't been careful about keeping his arm up either. “That'll put a crimp in their style, hopefully. I've done a lot of studying of my own world's military history, and some things are universal. If we can cut off the military's supply lines, break up the shipyards and manufacturing plants, close down mines and things like that, we can cripple them without risking too many lives.”

There was another yelp from the practice ground. “No, Keith,” Lizenne's voice cut into their discussion, “throw the bola, not yourself! Plant your feet first. We'll practice a running cast later.”

“Among other things,” Modhri said, declining to examine the results of that one. “Kolivan is determined to put an end to the Ghamparva, and I wish him success. In the meantime, how are you feeling?”

“Useless,” Shiro replied frankly. “I want to be a part of... well, of everything, and I can't.”

Modhri smiled sympathetically. “I've been there. Have patience, it'll get better. Actually...” Modhri cast speculative eyes up at Tilla. “Do your people have riding animals?”

Shiro blinked. “Yes. Horses, mostly. Why?”

“Riding astride a beast is an excellent form of gentle exercise, and it can be very enjoyable. Tilla, would you mind?”

Tilla perked up and made an odd, eager little  _“Gwirk!”_ sound.

“She'll let me ride her?” Shiro asked, his own spirits lifting at the idea.

Modrhi grinned at him, and Tilla bent down to lick his ear. “Oh, yes. She enjoys it. Lizenne had me up on her back often enough while I was recovering. Let me go and get the saddle, and she'll give you a nice tour of the deck.”

The saddle, when Modhri came back with it, was a large, curiously-shaped, stuffed-leather cushion that strapped on over Tilla's shoulders, and she very graciously lay down so that Shiro could clamber up onto her back without too much difficulty. There were handgrips and toeholds sewn onto it here and there, and he soon had the trick of moving with the big dragon as she paced decorously around the rock formation, the better to get him used to riding a-dragonback. This had not gone unnoticed by his team, and there was much waving and shouting and cries of “me next!” as Tilla strode off into the grasslands.

It really was very pleasant, he discovered. Tilla was warm underneath him and the “sun” beat down pleasantly on his head and shoulders, and he could feel his stiff muscles loosening up as they went along. There were the Zampedran equivalents of birds and butterflies flitting about, filling the air with song and color, and strange things grunted and rustled in the clumps of bushes that forced their way through the grasses here and there. She waded through the occasional stream as well, the cool water lapping pleasantly at his toes, sending bright-colored fish and small aquatic animals darting away. They even caught sight of the yulpadi, and he felt Tilla tense beneath him as she sized up her prey. The bizarre-looking creature jerked its steam-shovel head up and stared at them with six large yellow eyes for a long moment before it shoved at the ground with all eight of its long, spiderlike legs. Shiro watched in amazement as the huge animal, easily the size of a full-grown bull rhinoceros, hurled itself into the air, twisting itself around like a cat to land with surprising grace and take off for the other side of the envirodeck with a speed that should have been impossible for anything that big. Tilla grunted, and he felt her trembling with eagerness to chase it. He patted her shoulder with one hand. “Not just yet, Tilla. Let them get some skill with those bolas first.”

The dragon heaved a long, disappointed sigh, but continued on in a ladylike fashion until they came back around to the hill above where Lizenne and the others were. They paused to watch for a moment, observing that the team had already started to improve. Hunk whirled his bolas and then let them go with a snap of the wrist that sent them humming through the air to wind around the pole, and he let out a whoop of triumph. Lizenne and Modhri were nowhere to be seen, having perhaps headed back into the ship on some errand or other. Tilla made a satisfied rumbling noise and half-turned away, glancing back at Shiro to see if he wanted another lap around the deck. Shiro scratched thoughtfully at his chin as he considered that, and felt that the universe owed both him and the dragon an indulgence. “You know, Tilla, this is really nice,” he said, and she cocked her head interestedly at his tone, “but it's a little tame. I also think that those guys down there could use a little exercise, too.”

Tilla grinned and turned back toward the group below them, crouching down and flexing her thigh muscles in the butt-wiggle that anyone who owned cats would have recognized instantly. He leaned down and grabbed hold of a couple of her horns. “Floor it.”

Tilla let out an almighty  _GRONK,_ and burst into a run.

 

Keith looked up sharply from untangling his bola when he heard the dragon bellow. “What was that?”

“Tilla, I think,” Allura said, eyeing the pole for another throw, and then paused. “Why is the ground shaking?”

“Guys?” Hunk said, and the dread in his voice had them all looking up in alarm.

Following his gaze, they saw the charging dragon.  _“Run!”_ Lance yelled, and they fled screaming through the grasses, Tilla and Shiro hot on their trail.

Later, they would admit that Lizenne was right about their hunting leathers; the rough grass stems and scratchy seed heads glanced off of the supple leather like raindrops off of a windshield, but that was small comfort at the moment. Tilla had chased them in a wide circle twice around the camp before Soluk popped his head out of a tussock, wondering what all the ruckus was about.  _“Soluk!”_ Pidge howled as they stampeded past,  _“Help!”_

Soluk observed his mate and her rider charging madly after them, grunted in amusement, and leaped forward into a run. He caught up with the fleeing Paladins easily and matched their speed, never faltering in his stride when Pidge made an athletic leap up to where she could grab his shoulder spikes. The others followed suit, leaping and clambering up however they could onto Soluk's surging shoulders. Behind them, Tilla let out a hoot that sounded suspiciously like the call to hunt, accompanied by a war whoop that could only have come from Shiro. Soluk hissed and put on a burst of speed that had his passengers yelping in alarm. _“Shiro, you bastard!”_ Pidge hollered over the wind, “What the heck?!”

A breathless laugh was her only answer. Tilla had sped up as well, and was nipping at Soluk's tail; Soluk let out an offended roar and swerved away, plunging down the slope of the hill at a speed and an angle that caused a great deal of screaming from the Paladins. Tilla followed hard on his heels, and he growled and slowed slightly, allowing him to ram his shoulder into hers. She bounced nimbly away, but there was a challenging glint in her azure eyes that stated louder than words that Soluk had started something that she, by damn, was going to finish.

“Ohgodohgodohgod, here she comes again!” Hunk yelled. “Go right! Go right!”

“Left! Left!” Lance contradicted, hauling on a shoulder spike.

Keith's sharp eyes spotted something lurking in the grasses ahead, and Soluk was headed right for it. “Rock! Look out! There's a— _aaaaaagh!”_

His scream was echoed by everyone else as Soluk launched himself over the stony barrier, flew like a bird for at least twenty feet, and landed running. Tilla had opted to avoid the stone outcropping and was galloping hard in an attempt to sideswipe them. Soluk saw her coming and adjusted his speed so that she missed, shooting by them like a drag racer, and allowing him to dash up behind her and ram his broad forehead into her rump. Tilla skidded, scrambled to stay upright, and barked a draconic swearword before taking off after him again. The dragons jousted in this manner a few more times, their riders whooping, screaming, and howling insults at every contact, until Tilla seemed to get a new idea. Dropping back into the rear position, she came up behind her mate, crowding him from the rear and snapping at him every time he tried to swerve or slow down. The reason for that became apparent when she forced him down a shallow incline, straight toward a feature that they'd seen before—an open area of red, ochre, and orange mosses surrounding a shallow pool and flanked by large bushes. Soluk _gronk_ ed in protest, but was moving too fast to stop. His front feet plunged through the moss and slipped, sending him plowing his length face-first into the marsh, the Paladins flying off of his back to splash down into the muck. Lizenne had been right about the mud, which was very thick and sticky indeed.

“ _Gronk!”_ Soluk protested, snorting muck out of his nostrils and heaving his mud-plastered and steaming body out of the slop, looking every inch the bog monster. _“Gronk!”_

Tilla merely stood at the edge of the water, a huge, triumphant grin on her scaly face and Shiro howling with breathless laughter on her shoulders.

After a moment, Hunk groaned and sat up as Soluk hauled himself out of the mud to go and roll in the grass. All of them looked like something found under a potter's wheel. “Guys, are you all still alive?”

“I think so,” a blob of mud that might have been Lance replied a little dazedly, peering around at the other blobs and lumps of muck. “Just muddy. I mean, it's nice mud, all cool and soft, and I think Allura's going native. Pidge, is that you, or am I talking to a mud pie?”

“That's a mud pie,” Pidge replied from a different pile of muck. “I'm over here. Allura, why are you going native? Keith? Where's Keith?”

“I'm here,” Keith said, wiping mud and bits of moss off of his face. “Allura? Seriously?”

“Oh, hush, this is lovely,” Allura said happily, squelching about a bit. “What an excellent texture! This is quite the best mud I've been in since I was a little girl, playing in the Palace Gardens back home. Very good for the skin, you know.”

“I'll take your word for it,” Pidge said sourly and glared up at Shiro, whose mirth had died down to strangled snickering. “I'm going to get you for this, Shiro.”

“You've... you've got to catch me first,” Shiro gasped, and then patted Tilla's shoulder. “Where next, Tilla?”

Tilla gave him a speculative glance, waggled her spiny eyebrows at the Paladins, and then dropped her right shoulder, sending Shiro tumbling off into the mud with a yelp of surprise.

“You're right,” Shiro said a moment later. “This is nice mud.”

Hunk scooped up a heaping handful. “Yeah. Have some more.”

A first-class mud fight followed that initial volley, and by the time that Lizenne and Modhri found them, there was little to differentiate them from the surrounding terrain. “Oh, dear,” Lizenne muttered. “Well, that explains why Tilla looks so smug, and why Soluk is sulking and dirty. Having a good time, children?”

“Oh, heck yeah!” Lance said, oozing. “Come on in, the mud's fine!”

“No, thank you, dear. The fur, you know.” Lizenne sighed. “So much for hunting that yulpadi. Another day, perhaps.”

“No, it's cool, I'm up for it,” Hunk said with a huge grin.

Modhri shook his head. “Perhaps, but the yulpadi isn't. You reek of hot dragon and swamp muck. The poor beast won't come within a mile of you. You seem to have tired the dragons out as well, and will owe them a very thorough brushing later.”

Pidge humphed. “I'll scrub Soluk, but not Tilla. She's a bad influence on certain people I could name.”

There was an unrepentant chortle from a heap of mud that might have been Shiro. “Still not sorry.”

Keith waved a hand, spattering globs of mud. “Yeah, we'll be out in a little while. This feels really good for some reason.”

“Mud, mud, glorious mud!” Lance yodeled the old comic song cheerfully. “Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood!”

“Lance...” Pidge sighed warningly.

Hunk wrapped an arm around Lance with a splatting sound. “So follow me, follow, down to the hollow, and there we will wallow in glorious mud!”

“Sing it, brother!” Lance said, and collected another fistful of mud in the ear, courtesy of Pidge.

Modhri chuckled. “Very well, then. Shiro, when it comes time for you to get out of there, will you be able to?”

“Yeah, sure, I... um.” Shiro struggled to get his legs under him, and found himself to be quite stuck, and also that his joints had locked up. “No.”

There was a chorus of muffled but vengeful laughter from his team. Modhri smiled. “I'll bring the wheelbarrow, and we'll hose you all down before we leave the deck. See you in a little time, then.”

The two Galra wandered off, leaving the team alone. There was a small pause, and then Lance smirked slyly at Shiro. “Can't move, huh?”

Shiro felt a deep sense of foreboding as his fellow Paladins started gathering up large handfuls of mud again. “You wouldn't.”

“Try us,” Pidge said, and hurled her handful with pinpoint accuracy, an action that was instantly copied by the others.

“Is this any way to treat your team leader?” He demanded when they had run out of steam.

“Of course not,” Allura said sweetly. “But it is the way we treat a dearly beloved friend who has been very naughty. As pleasant as this is, Shiro, I was not anticipating so much excitement first!”

“All right, all right, yeah, I got carried away,” he admitted, wiping mud from his face. “But you should have seen your faces when Tilla charged.”

Modhri returned a few minutes later with the wheelbarrow, and by degrees they hauled themselves and Shiro out of the muck with as fine a collection of obscene sucking noises from the marsh as they could wish. Shiro sighed as they flopped him down into the barrow and observed his ruined clothing. “Well, so much for this pair of pants.”

“You're still wearing pants?” Hunk asked.

Shiro blinked at him. “You aren't?”

Hunk patted his waist with both hands, making splatting noises in the thick layer of mud that coated him from top to toe. “I can't tell.”

Modhri chuckled and took the barrow's handlebars in hand, starting off toward the camp. “We'll find out soon enough. Lizenne and Coran are waiting for you all by the exit with bathrobes and a hose. You all will want a proper bath, of course, and Shiro will need a hot soak and a rest.”

That sounded heavenly, in Shiro's opinion. “Oh, god, yes. I think I overdid it.”

Modhri nodded calmly. “I wouldn't be at all surprised. You might ask Zaianne for a massage, you know. She's very good, and is far more familiar with Human musculature than I am.”

There was an awkward silence. She would, they knew, from studying Keith's father. “Um,” Keith said, “you mean you and my Mom...”

“Oh, yes,” Modhri replied calmly. “I often help Lizenne tend some of the more difficult plants and animals on this deck, as well as performing maintenance on both the _Chimera_ and the Castle. I've recovered very well, but I am still not as strong as I would like, and I occasionally overdo it as well. Zaianne has been kind enough to ease my hurts when Lizenne is busy with other things. It's the duty of the ladies of the Pack to look after the men when they've been injured, after all. Why should this be any different? Shiro has every right to request her aid if he feels the need.”

“Yeah, but it's... well, it's a little weird,” Lance said uncomfortably. “Massages are kind of intimate, and she's adopted him as her son, but she's been giving him these looks...”

Modhri humphed thoughtfully. “I keep forgetting that your social structure is very different from ours in some ways. When Galra adopt unrelated people as family, it's... how shall I put this? It's more casual in some ways than other peoples might do it. A married couple will stay together until death parts them, of course, but a widowed or unattached woman is free to pick and choose among her adopted relatives. So long as they are both adults and not related by blood, there is no stigma attached. It must be that way; a woman may not be denied her chosen man by a minor social convention. I see Pidge and Allura as your sisters, Lance, for all that neither of them are blood-related, or in Allura's case, a completely different species, and it would still be perfectly fine if they started giving _you_ those looks. It is all for the good of the Pack. I count myself to be very fortunate in my adoptive family.”

Shiro was glad that he was covered with muck, because he was pretty sure that he was blushing as redly as Lance was. “Is Zaianne interested in me?”

Modhri navigated the wheelbarrow carefully around a jutting stone and shook his head. “Not as such. You're a handsome and valorous fellow, but she hasn't had enough time to gauge your personality, to make sure that you would be a good fit. I rather doubt that she will make overtures in your direction anyway; you're too young for her, and you're too heroically-inclined for her taste. Widows generally prefer men nearer their own age, who are calmer and steadier and less likely to dash off into dangerous situations.”

“That's right,” Hunk said, brushing globs of mud off of his front, “that's 'cause it's the guys who do most of the babysitting.”

“And gladly,” Modhri agreed, and they all heard the yearning in his voice. “Don't worry about Zaianne. When Lizenne and Jasca and I take Tzairona's body back to Galran Prime in order to force House Ghurap'Han to release my family, she shall have plenty to choose from.” He gave them one of his rare mischievous smiles, and they saw just a flicker of Zandrus Khael'Xor in his expression. “I am not the only man of my quality among my Lineage.”

 

They were duly hosed off and made to trade their clothing for bathrobes; Lizenne had reassured them that neither the leathers nor Shiro's clothing had taken any permanent harm and had shooed them off to go and get properly clean. Not before Coran had requested and received permission to go and squelch about in the mud as well, however—No sense in passing up on a chance to enjoy a properly churned-up mud wallow, he'd said, and since the muck had left everybody's skin lily-soft, Shiro wasn't going to argue. Alteans looked, sounded, and even acted very Humanlike, but he knew better than to make assumptions. Instead, he scrubbed off in the shower area of the Queen's suite, donned his swim trunks, and soaked for a time in the hot tub with the others, and sort of wished that he was semiaquatic so he could take up residence there. It was a passing fancy, though, and was soon driven out of his mind by a pressing reality; Modhri had indeed had a quiet word with Zaianne, and he was now flat on his belly on a massage bench, torn between euphoric bliss and mild unease as her strong hands kneaded the stiffness out of his back and limbs. It felt wonderful, but some dark and twitchy corner of his mind kept reminding him what had happened to him the last time he'd lain on a table, with Galra hands on his body...

“Relax, will you?” Zaianne murmured. “You keep tensing up.”

“Sorry,” he said, forcing his anxieties back under control. “Bad associations.”

A callused hand patted his shoulder. “I understand. I had to help my colleagues break a Ghamparva base once, and what we found in there... well. If Haggar's lab was anything like theirs, I won't chide you for your nerves. Just relax. You're doing very well.”

Shiro grunted, sighed, and did his best to comply. “Not bad for the second day out of bed, huh?”

She chuckled, and smoothed out a knot in his lower back that even the hot soak hadn't been able to relax. “I'll say. You're already walking, if only for short distances, and that little game of bumper-dragons just now should have been quite beyond your abilities. Most of your body is brand-new, and yet you are already weeks ahead of where you should be! You're being helped along, sir, and so subtly and gently that nobody's noticed but me.”

_That_ surprised him. “I am? By who?”

“I'm not sure,” Zaianne admitted, moving her hands to a tight spot below his right shoulderblade. “I am by no means as sensitive as Lizenne is, or your team. I suspect that it's a group effort. I can almost guarantee that the Lion is giving you strength, and that your bond with your fellow Paladins is allowing them to speed your recovery. They're not even aware that they're doing it, but it's having an effect nonetheless.”

Shiro considered that, and was heartened by it. “You've had some experience with this sort of thing?”

“I know about recovery times for major injuries,” Zaianne told him. “I've had to nurse a number of people, sometimes without the aid of medics or medical systems. I know how long it took to recover from my own injuries after I crashed on Earth, and I've had some experience with Human recovery times as well. Khaeth's father wrenched his back once, which is how I learned to ease muscle pain in Humans. It took him weeks to recover fully from that, and he was quite fit and not much older then than you are now.”

Shiro hummed thoughtfully, and felt for the bond he shared with the Lion. The others had described how they had learned to see it, even use it to do things, but he had missed those lessons. It was there, he perceived dimly, warm and comforting. “You're probably right. Um. I've noticed that you never use his name--”

“Nor will I.” Her voice wasn't sharp, but there was an edge to it. “Where I come from, it's not done for a widow to use the name of her departed mate. The bond between a married couple is very deep, you see, and if she were to speak his name, it's possible that the soul might hear her calling and try to come back. That sort of thing can cause all sorts of trouble.”

Shiro chuckled. “Ghosts?”

“Partly that,” Zaianne replied, working her hands down his left upper arm. “The departed husband's spirit might return to find his wife looking at a new man, and then fly into a rage and make their lives miserable. Or he might try to reanimate his body. I expect that you've seen a few zombie vids, and can imagine what might happen. If he's already been reborn into a new life, there might be enough of the soul-bond left to make his life a misery, yearning for someone who might be a lifetime and lightyears away. Or, if he had pleased our death-god enough to have his soul preserved in that deity's collection of heroes... hah. Kuphorosk does not appreciate having those gems stolen right off of his string. I will not insult Khaeth's father by disturbing his spirit so, or risk the wrath of a god whose favor we need.”

Shiro smiled. “A little superstitious, there?”

Zaianne snorted and tweaked his ear. “Perhaps, and then again, most definitely not. All the proof I need is in Lizenne's bone spear, and the fact that you, sir, are alive and sane after being most comprehensively destroyed. Life and death, and the purpose of both made manifest in one spot. How all of this will play out in the coming days, I have no idea, but it will be very interesting to watch.”

Shiro remembered what he'd been told of the spear, and how Allura had brought Zarkon to his knees with it, and the lengths that his team had gone to in order to resurrect him. Shiro felt a growing suspicion that he was inside a legend, possibly two; one that was still in the making, and one that had begun millennia before he'd been born. His mind flinched away from the implications of that, and he retreated to a safer topic. “So, how about keeping the name in the family?”

He heard her puff a faint breath. “At a generation's remove, preferably two or three. Safer that way. Khaeth bears the name of one of my great-uncles, whom I was very fond of when I was small. Thankfully, it's close enough to a common Human name to get by. I believe that 'Keith' was the name of his Human great-grandfather as well, so his father and I were both in agreement on that matter. Perhaps later, when Khaeth finds himself in a position to do so, he might pass on his father's name to one of his sons or grandsons.” She chuckled softly. “Pidge would be a good woman for him.”

Shiro choked a little on that. “Her family might object.”

“They are four thousand lightyears away at the moment, and Pidge will have the final say in the end. She has already shown a preference for him, and I'm certainly in favor of the match.” Zaianne dug her thumbs into another tight spot. “I want grandchildren, and heroes are not so common in this universe that I am willing to let that pairing go unencouraged.”

Shiro dissolved into helpless laughter that ended in a pained grunt; she'd found another knot in his left thigh that was proving to be difficult. “Poor Keith! What about Lance and Hunk, then?”

“I don't know,” Zaianne replied calmly. “There is always Allura, or they might find someone else. Hah. Or she and Pidge might just decide to claim the lot of you. There have been a few instances of that in Earthly history, if not my own. Neither girl is Galra, so I will take what I can get. It is too early yet, in any case. Neither Khaeth nor the girls are ready for that sort of thing, and there is too much to do before any of us can indulge ourselves in that way. Zarkon and Haggar must be stopped, the former Empire properties must be stabilized, and any number of wrongs must be righted before we can think of doing more than stealing a kiss or two. First and foremost, we must get you back to the point where you may pilot the black Lion.”

Shiro's fists clenched, aching to hold the control beams in his hands again, and he felt the Lion's approval of Zaianne's statement. “I'll do my best.”

She patted his bottom. “So will we.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zaianne has just done what the entire fandom would give their left leg to do.
> 
> As always, thank you to everyone who takes the time to leave comments and kudos. Especially during this time of the year, they're what keeps us energized and inspired to continue writing. For anyone who's wondering, we still plan to continue this series even though the actual show will be over. We have our own ending in mind. ^_^
> 
> And a reminder to all you lucky people who have the time to see the new season right off the bat on the first day, NO SPOILERS! If you post anything that contains spoilers, please remember to tag a warning on it. I won't get to watch until Saturday evening, and I don't want the whole thing ruined for me! Have mercy on my sorry carcass, gentle readers!


	18. Conclaves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent altogether too long proofreading this. But hey, I don't need sleep!

Chapter 18: Conclaves

 

Zarkon vented a soft _hmph_ as his armor abruptly tripled in weight, just as he'd set foot on the first step of the emergency stairwell, and he had to catch the safety rail to keep from overbalancing. It would not do the Imperial pride any good to fall down the stairs. Or the Imperial person, for that matter; despite everything that Haggar and the medics had done, his leg and shoulder still twinged at sudden movements. That would fade, he knew, but the fact that he had been hurt at all still annoyed him. His ire was as nothing to that of Haggar's at the moment, of course; he might have lost a little blood, but she had lost a great deal more. A _very_ great deal. Not her inner sanctum, where she kept the most interesting bits and pieces that she'd picked up during her long life, her personal quarters, her scrying chamber and the most important ritual spaces; those halls were in the core of the Center itself, and accessible only by one very well-hidden secret passage.

As it was, the damage was bad enough. It was a remarkably specific hex that had been laid on the science level. Devices taken from the deck activated again once they had been taken to a different level, but the boundary was very clear, and it didn't discriminate as to what sort of mechanism it shut down. Nothing on this level worked anymore, not even the simplest of hand tools. Anything that had any moving parts at all, even if it was merely a knob or a hinge, immediately froze up or came to pieces, and anything powered shut down instantly. That his armor and that of the soldiers held together was more a function of the inner lining than anything else. Haggar had been testing the extent of the problem all morning. So far, the two cooks in the cafeteria had quit their jobs in disgust and several soldiers with cybernetic implants had had both physical and nervous breakdowns. She was using security drones now, and when last he'd checked, the entire level had been compromised. It had certainly screwed up the lifts, which either jammed in the shafts or simply dropped through, pulling up with a jerk at the level below, which was not good for either the troops or the freight they were moving. The comm systems in the levels above and below could not get through either, or the power and utility mains, and the Center's engineers had been frantically rigging bypasses on the outside of the station's hull for the past several days. Necessary, but it made the Center look as though someone had cut it in half through the middle, and then had stitched it rather clumsily back together.

Which they might have to do in truth, he mused; if Haggar could not remove the hex, then the level itself was useless for anything other than perhaps storage. Well, the Quartermaster Corps had been pestering him for more shelf space lately anyway. It would serve them right if he did have them packing spare uniforms and food concentrates in a dark, airless cavern of a level where one had to resort to candles and the simplest of chemical lamps for lighting. The chemically-powered emergency dims had burned out a day or two ago, and while the dark didn't bother _him,_ it would make life difficult for them. Darkness had not bothered him since his first taste of Quintessence ages ago. In fact, he preferred it. There was nothing in the dark that was any more fearsome than he was, and even pitch-darkness was never more than a sort of twilight to his eyes. The light... sunlight in particular had begun to hurt his eyes long ago, and he didn't like the touch of it even now. Starlight was all right, but it brought back memories that he would prefer remain buried. Artificial was best, of course, the pale purple of Quintessence-powered lighting systems was soothing to him, and remained steady no matter the hour. Even so, it palled on him after a time, and he found it somewhat amusing to traverse the science level in total darkness like this, navigating by simple ingrained memory, even in powered armor that had lost all of its power. A little extra exercise was always good, and it was infinitely preferable to sitting on his throne and listening to some fool complain about some petty matter or other. There were times, very rarely, when he wondered why he had ever made a bid for the throne in the first place. Then he would remember the catastrophic betrayal that had left his Lineage and the majority of his people dead and his homeworld a crumbling cinder, and thought no more of it.

A thin howl of distress and pain split the air nearby, and the sound of lurching footsteps that got closer by the second. Zarkon paused, curious, and watched as a frantic figure half-fell around a corner, stayed upright by main strength and a good deal of flailing, and then staggered blindly forward until it collided with Zarkon's chest with a clang. It groped one-handed at his armor, blurted a confused and disjointed babble that might, in a better decade, have been a demand to get out of its way, and then slid to the floor in a twitching heap. Zarkon realized with mild disgust that this was Lieutenant Ankhraz, a fanatically-loyal officer who had been bucking for promotion to the General Staff. His suicidal bravery on the battlefield had given him a reputation for near-psychotic fearlessness in the face of insurmountable odds, and his men admired him... from a safe distance, by preference. His attitude had also made it necessary to replace a large number of parts left behind on those battlefields: a leg, an arm, the left eye, an ear, half of his lower jaw, and quite a lot of his hide. To see him huddled on the floor, whimpering brokenly like this, was disappointing to say the least.

Zarkon looked up at the clatter of running feet, and saw the approaching glow of a lantern. Three soldiers with their helmets under their arms scrambled around the corner, then screeched to a halt when they saw him.

“Your Majesty!” the one holding the lantern blurted in surprise, then sketched a breathless bow. “Sorry, your Majesty, but we couldn't hold him.”

“Oh?” Zarkon asked curiously. “He should not have been here without permission in the first place.”

The lantern-holder nodded nervously. “Yes, Majesty, but he tends to ignore things like that. He'd heard that the hex that was laid on this level is hard on people with prosthetics, so he came down here to test his courage. Haggar didn't bother to stop him. He got as far as the cafeteria before he lost it.”

Zarkon nodded, and nudged the moaning officer with one foot. “Barely halfway to the main lab. I would have expected better of him. Is there anything else I should know about?”

The lantern-holder gulped. “One of Haggar's... um... subjects is still wandering around down here. The others have been put down, but that last one's sneaky. Generals Pendrash, Chadrok, and Pharket are hunting it, along with a bunch of others, but, well, watch your back, Majesty. It's already eaten Commander Zrak and Field-Marshal Huroth.”

Zarkon nodded in approval, and not just because he hadn't been at all fond of those two officers. Scions of the Noble Houses, the pair of them, and they had been living proof that impeccable breeding did not guarantee talent. Their deaths were no loss. Zarkon considered hunting the creature himself for a moment, and then decided against it. Let it thin the ranks of the unsatisfactory a little longer. “That is as well, and I will deal with it myself if it finds me. Get back to your regular duty and leave the thing to the greater warriors.”

“Yes, your Majesty,” the lantern-holder said, and motioned to his fellow soldiers to lift Ankhraz, only to be halted by a sharp gesture from their Emperor. “Majesty?”

Zarkon glanced down with contempt at the broken soldier on the floor. “Leave him. If he cannot make it to the next level on his own, he is a failure, and I do not countenance failure among my officers. Where is Haggar?”

“Main lab, your Majesty, having a look at what's left of the Great Transformation Chamber.” The soldier shuddered. “You might want to be careful around her, too, sir. She's really upset.”

Zarkon stepped over Ankhraz with an indifferent wave of one hand. “As may only be expected. Carry on, soldier.”

“Yessir,” the man with the lantern said, bowing again and hurrying off with his fellows toward the stairs.

Zarkon headed onward, and although he heard the occasional coughing roar somewhere in the distance, no monsters loomed out of the shadows at him, and it was with mild disappointment on that matter that he came upon his longtime partner's private laboratory. It was, as he'd heard, a dreadful mess, and there was a definite stink of spoiled meat on the air. From the cold-storage room, he surmised; with the power out, her sample collection would have gone very bad indeed. Past the smashed machinery and the cold-storage room (the lock on it not only broken but slagged), there were lights ahead that had him moving right along toward the huge chamber where the Robeasts were activated. No more, he soon found; nothing would ever be built here again. Haggar was standing in the center of the vast open space with witchlights hovering around her, glaring up at an invisible point halfway to the peak of the dome, her fine-featured face creased in anger. A memory surfaced, somewhat to his surprise, the past emotions blooming like preserved flowers under glass: fully visible, but with neither scent nor substance. He could remember thinking of her, long ago, as being at her loveliest when thwarted by mischance. _How dare that project fail,_ those elegant cheekbones and determined chin had seemed to say, _how dare that test subject die before the experiment was completed?_ She was so fierce, so determined to have her way, so set upon extracting the Fates themselves out of the realm of myth and sealing them into bell jars where they wouldn't keep getting underfoot all the time. That had attracted him so powerfully once, to the point of disregarding the will of his parents and his own genetic future. The woman they had betrothed him to had been a beautiful, wealthy, and well-connected Simadhi Princess, and represented a political alliance that his House and his world sorely needed at that time. She had been willing to wed him, but not willing to put up with having competition for his affections, and he had spent many a sleepless night trying to puzzle out a way to best please both his family and the woman that had drawn and fascinated him. It had not helped that the affairs of the Empire had closed in around him, and political strife had kept him and his team too busy to think of anything but fighting, and then...

_And then it was too late,_ he mused. He had put a stop to all of that with such thoroughness that no civil war had erupted in Empire space since that time; in the end, he possessed almost all that he had truly desired, but at a terrible cost. That cost was not something that he was willing to dwell on at this time, so he put it out of his mind. Strange. His memory had been throwing up odd bits and pieces of the past from time to time ever since he had awakened from his coma. The intruder in his mind, much like a burglar in an abandoned house, had stirred up the dust of ages while slinking around. It wasn't important. The past was dead and long dead, and better that it should be that way. He leaned against the doorframe and called down to her from there: “Will you want the Paladins alive, or dead?”

She bared her teeth, but not in a smile. “Alive, but not whole. I shall see to their eventual demise myself. They will _beg_ me for that mercy long before I will be willing to grant it to them. Two Technomages, my Lord, a Perfect Mirror, a Healer and a Purifactor, and ones of extraordinary power. There has not been such a gathering of talents in eons. I can no longer make use of this level.”

“The hex, I assume,” Zarkon said mildly, making his way forward to stand with her on the hardened pool of mixed metals that had once been a unique apparatus, “you cannot lift a fellow witch's curse?”

She hissed and waved an angry hand at the walls, where mechanisms slumped half-slagged as if from some incredible burst of heat. “That wasn't her. That hex is the work of the second Technomage, and he laid it right into the atomic structure of the metal itself. I cannot remove it. We could slice the Center apart and remove the entire level, melt it down in a solar crucible seven times, and it would still kill any mechanism it came in contact with.”

Zarkon gazed speculatively around the room. “We might consider doing that. A rod cast of that metal, fired into an enemy ship's drive section, might deliver an interesting result.”

Haggar made an impatient gesture. “You would have to find perfect marksmen, and a launching device that it wouldn't affect. There would only be a finite number of rods, and you would have to recover each rod after you'd used it. That assumes, of course, that the rod would still be intact, and that removing it would not cause the damaged drive to explode around you. _And,_ of course, some wretched little traitor would steal or destroy the stockpile, to say nothing of the time, expense, and effort of removing the level in the first place, or the fact that doing so would render the Center unusable for entirely too long. Time enough, perhaps, for Voltron to smash both halves to scrap. A satisfying repurposement of this curse, initially, but ultimately self-defeating. We are better off storing supplies here, or using it as an extention of the training decks.”

As if in answer, there was another beastly howl of fury from somewhere in the level. Haggar sighed. “I will need to rebuild.”

“Of course,” Zarkon said calmly, running the various research levels through his mind and considering which departments had disappointed him the most lately. “Above or below this level?”

Haggar was about to reply when approaching footsteps sounded in the hall, light and quick. Haggar's witchlights revealed the man to be Pendrash's aide, and the young man bowed, but came no closer than the threshold. “Forgive me for interrupting, Majesty, my Lady, but I bring news.”

“Proceed,” Zarkon commanded.

The young man dipped another bow. “The point of entry has been identified as an inset airlock of the sort left by Grezzani Hatchcrackers—boarding craft specifically designed for that sort of work. The engineers tell me that this was a Mark VII, and that they can't remove the airlock without risking explosive decompression of at least three levels of the station. The hatch itself is wired to blow if anyone fiddles with it, and none of the emergency doors are working. We'd have to evacuate and seal the levels above and below, cut the airlock out, and then patch the hull.”

Zarkon humphed. “Do it. I will not have a door that I cannot use.”

“Yes, Majesty,” Pendrash's aide said. “Also, I must report that the Nemortine Beronites are staging an uprising; they have removed every Governor within their sphere of influence and have destroyed or driven off the Garrison fleets.”

Zarkon's eyes glinted. “How? They have no warships.”

The aide took a data chip from a pocket. “From the look of it, every Beronite ship is a warship, camoflaged so well that the Governors never noticed. Very effective warships, too. I have the particulars on this chip.”

Zarkon grunted sourly. “Those Governors, if they still live, will suffer for their failures, as will the Beronites for their treachery.”

“Yes, Majesty,” the aide continued, “also, there is rebel activity out by Halidex, and it's not just the Ghost Fleet again; the Castle of Lions and the _Chimera Rising_ have been spotted in that area as well. Our informants in the area report that their next target is likely to be the Bericonde System, which is a major trade center for that region. They request that the Imperial Fleets be reinforced; many of their ships were requisitioned by the Prince, and then lost during the battles he got into, and have not as yet been replaced.”

“That fool boy,” Haggar growled. “Haven't you any good news for us?” she asked acidly.

The aide had no time to reply, for a shattering, furious bellow sounded right behind him, and he was forced to throw himself to one side as Haggar's last test subject came blasting into the chamber. Zarkon reacted instantly, pulling his sword from its scabbard. He'd had to dig around in his personal storage space for this one, having used his bayard exclusively for the past ten thousand years. This sword was no match for his favored weapon, but it did have a certain personal value, being the one that his father had given him on the day he had come of age. Ancient though it was, it was still as sharp and efficient now as it had been at the moment it had been presented to him.

The beast that came screaming through the doorway was worthy of it, being a tangled, ghastly mass of fangs, claws, eyes, quills, and tentacles. _In a way, it's almost a shame,_ he thought as he flashed into motion, blade hissing through the air in one long, lethal arc. _This thing would have made a fine Robeast._

Or perhaps not. Big and ugly though it was, it had little coordination, no intelligence, and it flailed about like an idiot as it lumbered toward him, snapping its three and a half fanged mandibles menacingly. Zarkon's single, well-timed slash severed its head from its body, and it collapsed in a pile of twitching limbs.

“Well,” Pendrash's aide said, sounding a bit shaken, “we won't have to worry about that thing anymore.”

Zarkon snorted, feeling slightly better for having made a kill. “Indeed. Not your best work, Haggar.”

Haggar shrugged dismissively. “It was only half-finished. I would prefer the level above this one, my Lord. There is a chamber there that is larger than this one; I believe that I can construct a new array that would allow me to build and activate more than one Robeast at a time.”

Zarkon wiped his sword clean and sheathed it, smiling. “I will give the necessary orders. After that, there are matters that must be seen to.”

“Indeed, my Lord.”

 

Shiro was gasping, soaked with the sweat of his efforts, and feeling on top of the world. He was getting stronger, he could feel it, and the simple fact that he could stand here, hands braced on his knees while he sucked in great lungfuls of air _without falling over_ was proof of that. His balance was back, and that gave him more hope than anything for a full recovery. He could walk without the cane now, and would soon be able to jog. Despite the aches that sang through his new muscles and the heat that was rising palpably off of his skin, he felt wonderful.

“Done yet?” Keith asked breathlessly, handing him a beverage packet.

Shiro accepted the packet and drained the fizzy, salt-sweet liquid to the last drop. Keith had more or less glued himself to Shiro's shadow over the past couple of weeks, even going so far as to perform the physical therapy exercises with him, often with Lance standing by as well, just in case he pulled something. Shiro didn't mind in the least, knowing full well that Keith needed this as much as he did. Shiro pulled himself up straight, took a few more breaths and concentrated on slowing his heartbeat down a little, flexing his hands and feeling the tendons tense and release. “One more set.”

They both looked at Modhri, who was watching him with a critical eye. The tall Galra man had been performing the exercises as well, and there was a definite tang of allspice and border collie emanating from his sweat-damp fur. For all that the scars still cut trails through the dense plush, he had put on a good deal of muscle since Shiro had last seen him. Even so, his collarbones still jutted slightly, and he carried no spare flesh on his frame. “A half-set,” Modhri said firmly, “Nasty will be upset if you're too tired to get through his lessons.”

Shiro nodded. The abrasive little pirate got on his nerves at times, but Shiro had to admit that he knew his stuff; he didn't drop things anything like as often now, and could be trusted with the silverware at dinnertime. Keith nudged him in the ribs with an elbow. “It's cardsharping today, and there will be cookies. If we're lucky, Tilla will play, too.”

Shiro couldn't help but to snort in amusement. The whole concept of a dragon who cheated at cards struck him as silly, and the fact that the team was either immune to her little tricks or getting to be as good at cheating as she was struck him as even sillier. On the other hand, he was willing to admit that he'd do just about anything for a pile of Hunk's cookies. The little jam-filled ones in particular made his very soul happy. “All right then,” he said agreeably. “A half-set. Second half?”

Modhri nodded. “If you've got your breath back. Ready? Good. Assume the stance.”

The exercises Modhri led them in weren't the sort that Shiro had done back on Earth, being more like dance moves than anything else; on the other hand, there were definite similarities to the martial arts forms that Shiro had been trained in, and he could feel it all coming back to him. Zaianne had promised to start drilling him in those as soon as Modhri judged his balance and strength to be up to the task. The dragons had already volunteered to help with his strength training as well, and the rest of the team would be right there next to him. There would also be aetheric exercises to bring him up to speed, and there was talk of a visit to Omorog so that he could get an assessment and lessons in precognition from a pro. All of that would lead him straight back into the cockpit of the black Lion. _Soon,_ he told himself, _soon._ Every day, he got a little stronger.

They finished the exercises and went through the cooldown stretches in companionable silence, then cleaned up and headed for the bridge, moving easily despite their previous efforts. Shiro smiled and asked, “Anything else on the itinerary today, other than card games?”

Keith scratched at an ear and replied, “We'll be meeting up with the Ghost Fleet to hammer out the last few details. Admiral Yantilee wants to take one of the big trade centers away from the Empire, and she's going to need us there to help deal with the defense force. There probably won't be any Robeasts, but the Empire's still got swarms of those big warships. We'll have to hang around for a while until we're sure that the place can handle a counterattack, but that won't be long; Kolivan says that the Beronites are ready to help out, and that those guys can pack a real punch.” Keith cast him a sidelong, apologetic glance. “You'll have to sit this one out. Sorry.”

Shiro patted his shoulder reassuringly. “So am I. You'll do fine, and I'm getting better. A lot faster than I should be, actually.”

Keith ducked his head in embarrassment. “We've been helping.”

“I kind of figured,” Shiro sighed. “Your mother spotted it first.”

“She told Lizenne,” Keith said with a sheepish smile. “Then Lizenne had a look at what we were up to. We didn't even know that we were doing it, and the Lions were doing it right along with us! Black wants you back, Shiro—I mean, he likes Allura and is cool with her piloting him, but you were his first choice. We've got it under control now, and you'll recover really fast, but not too fast. Just don't count on making any of those interdimensional time jumps again. Pidge and Hunk did the math, and they got answers that they're having trouble believing.”

Shiro snorted. “I've got no intention of doing that again, believe me. Not until I'm sure that I can get myself back out without help.”

Keith nodded. “Lizenne says that she can give us some exercises that'll show you how to do that. She's been kicking herself about leaving when she did, you know, right before you left, even though it was really necessary.”

Shiro's eyebrows rose. “Really?”

“Yes, actually,” Modhri said quietly, touching the button that called the lift. “There were things that we had to do as well. We might not be up to your sort of heroics, but we could spread disinformation, pass vital facts and warnings to the various resistance groups, provide funding to those who desperately needed it, and basically weaken the foundations that the Imperial Military rests on. We have also been aiding the Blade of Marmora in their work, allowing them to remove the worst of the oppressors, perform certain acts of sabotage, and coordinate the resistance groups together into a greater whole. Very low-key stuff, but it has turned out to be vital, and there are hundreds of worlds now that are aware that not all Galra are evil. It isn't enough just to win a few space battles, you know. Lizenne and I have a responsibility to keep not only our own pack alive, but to make sure that our race as a whole survives what is coming.” He cocked Shiro a thoughtful look. “I might suggest that you help Allura with the diplomatic work while you recover; you are very much a leader, and people trust you instinctively. She'll need you to help her in keeping those oppressed peoples from avenging themselves upon the innocent.”

Shiro considered that, and found the suggestion to be surprisingly attractive. One could only exercise so much, and his brain wanted work as much as his body did. “You're right. I'll have a word with her. But first--” he flashed his companions a grin as they stepped into the lift, “--I'm going to win all of your cookies. Hunk made more of those jam-filled ones, right?”

“A whole batch, fresh this morning,” Keith grinned back. “Orsyx, trimblat, tetha, smofberry, and a few new flavors from the _Chimera's_ envirodeck. Everybody wants to try those, but Hunk won't let us until everyone's there.”

Modhri chuckled. “Then we had better get a move on, hmm?”

The lift doors hissed open, and Shiro stepped out briskly on sure feet, glad to be able to do just that. “You bet.”

The team was already there on the bridge, seated on floor cushions in a circle while Zaianne and Coran minded the ship's helm, warming up by flipping a deck of Dix-Par cards between them while Nasty stood by, leaning on Tilla's foreleg. For her part, the dragon was guarding the cookie jar and watching the four Paladins with a sour expression on her scaly face. Shiro couldn't blame her; something in that jar smelled amazing, and she wasn't going to be able to hog it all for herself this time. Lance looked up at their arrival, grinned, and then skimmed the cards at Keith in one long stream of pasteboard rectangles. Keith caught them with practiced ease and shuffled the deck before flipping the whole thing at Nasty in what looked like a loose clump. The Unilu's four hands flashed into motion, gathering up each card midair with surprising coordination, separating the deck into quarters and fanning them out. He squinted critically at the images on the cards, and humphed. “Good job of shuffling, kids, or it would have been if we weren't playing with the dragon's deck. Tilla, cut it out already, this kind of thing'll get you lynched in some casinos I know of.”

Tilla's nose lifted into the air in a disdainful sniff that made it very clear to all present that she would _never_ lower herself by setting foot in such an establishment. Lance poked her with a disbelieving finger. “Yeah, right. Where we come from, dragons collect treasure, and you wouldn't be able to resist. Hunk, don't you dare build her a roulette wheel.”

“I wasn't even thinking about it!” Hunk protested, although there was a faintly guilty look on his face, and Shiro had a brief mental image of Tilla as a Las Vegas croupier. That boggled his mind a little, particularly when he considered what would happen when the criminal groups that preyed on those establishments tried to bully or recruit her.

“Good morning,” Allura greeted them cheerfully, “you look very well today, Shiro. Would you like to join us? Modhri?”

“Sure, although I've never played... what was it, Dix-Par before,” Shiro replied, pulling a floor cushion from a handy stack nearby. “Is it anything like poker?”

“Sort of,” Pidge said, skootching her cushion aside to make room. “A lot of the rules are different, and it borrows some from other games, too.”

“But only on alternate Porgsdays, and only if someone in the room is wearing an ugly necktie,” Nasty added, catching the cushion that Modhri tossed him and thumping it down on the floor. “Freestyle play is for professionals, anyway. We'll stick to the basics for now. The whole idea is to build a hand with a value greater than anybody else's, but that value depends to some degree on what everyone else has got. The deck tells a story, sort of, and the plot changes every time you play it. It's a little like politics.”

Shiro settled himself down and accepted a hand of cards and a small bowl full of fresh cookies. “We've got a few like that at home. So, what goes into a winning hand?”

Nasty was a skilled teacher, laying out the various combinations of cards and explaining their significance, and the best ways to play them, and it wasn't long before Shiro had the gist of it. The first few games were slow and simple, the better to get him used to it. Even Tilla refrained from what were apparently her usual tricks until they'd completed the third game, which Keith won with a very respectable Warlord's Discretion, beating out Modhri's Crazed Vigilante by perhaps half a point. It was a very interesting game, Shiro thought as he shuffled the deck for the next round—there were elements of chess, since there was a mathematical component, and methods by which even the lowliest hands could beat out the highest, but there was a definite resemblance to certain adventure games as well. Another happy import for the folks back home, he figured, assuming that he'd have the leisure later on to teach this game to the cardsharps of Earth. Maybe if he insisted that the game could only be played for cookies...

Something on Coran's console went _bloop_ and a window popped up on the screens, showing the face of an alien that looked very much like an elderly wombat, if a wombat could wear a monocle and a tricorne hat. _“Ho, now, who goes there?”_ the old fellow asked in a humorous tone, _“You're creeping into Halidexan space, so you are, and the border is very strictly enforced! No gate-crashers allowed at this party, you know.”_

Pidge let out a squeak of delight and abandoned the game in a scattering of cards, leaping up to wave cheerfully at the screens. “Captain Voan Lenna! It's just us, we're on the list and you know it, so quit messing around. How have you all been? Are the fixes Hunk made to your ship holding? You look great! Is that a new hat?”

The wombat patted his hat, which was a very stylish piece of haberdashery in gold-trimmed chestnut, complete with feathers that resembled ostrich plumes. _“It is, and glad I am to have it, too! Ketzewan's mad tailor has set up shop in our new hometown, and she is ridiculously popular with both our lot and the locals alike. It is good to see you again, Miss Varda, my ship continues undaunted, and all is well above and below. Very well below, in fact. Why, I absolutely must show you around the fine town that Zoallam has planned and built for us, it is his masterpiece and he is very proud of it. He did a lovely job, so much so that it's become something of a tourist trap. Such pleasures are for later, alas; I have been asked to escort you and your friends to the_ Quandary _for the time being, as the Admiral wishes to convene a conference of warriors. There, we may plan our future actions, which will not take long. Elikonians, you know.”_

Pidge grinned. “Oh, yeah. No arguments lasting more than five minutes, and no talking in circles, either. We've really got to get more of those guys out into space again, if only to cut the red tape a little.”

Captain Voan Lenna chuckled. _“Our most admirable Admiral has been working very hard to do just that, and I've never seen him happier. Come along, First Mate, the sooner we're done deciding how and where to shoot, the sooner you might head planetside to embrace your uncle and cousin... who have also become very popular with everyone in sight. Have you ever tasted their saldmin-spiced oqua? Truly, 'tis to live for!”_

“And the morlaberry tarts,” Pidge agreed. “Ronok's the best, and Tamzet's a fast learner. Lead on, Captain.”

Shiro smiled to see her chattering cheerfully with their contact; those six months she'd spent on the  _Quandary_ seemed to have cured her of her difficulty in making friends, at least. A surreptitious movement out of the corner of his eye distracted him from the screens, however, and he turned to see Hunk and Lance gathering up her dropped cards for a surreptitious peek. Keith, Modhri, Allura, Nasty, and Tilla were also craning over for a look.

“Guys,” he murmured chidingly.

To their credit, most of them looked a little ashamed of themselves. “Oh, come on, Shiro, the demo's over,” Lance whispered. “Cheating's allowed now.”

“I know,” Shiro said, reaching for the purloined cards, “I want a look, too.”

Nasty smirked. “That's the spirit. Looks like she's trying to construct a Mad Scientist's Rampage. A tricky hand, but it's a good one, and it's one of her favorites.”

Keith snickered. “Yeah, maybe too much of a favorite. All it takes to stump one of those is a Disgruntled Employee or a Gentleman Adventurer, but if you can put together an Unexpected Financial Audit, all bets are off.”

Shiro considered that for a moment, having interned in the Garrison's Bursar's Office during his second year of training, when one of those had happened in real life.  _He_ hadn't gotten into trouble, being a lowly data-entry grunt at that time, but his superiors... well, there had been three demotions, four arrests, and one dishonorable discharge via the garbage chute. Commander Iverson had been furious all week after that, and nobody would talk about it even as late as the Kerberos Expedition. “I can see that.”

Hunk waggled a hand. “Most times, yeah, but if someone has an Unassailable Accountant's Recordkeeping or an Ultimate Grifter—those are really hard to build—even the tax inspectors have to take a powder. Most of the time you're better off going for a hand like Fleet Commander's Tactics or maybe an Invasion From the Netherhells, but if you're really serious about it, you can get a--”

“Smack over the head with a floor pillow?” Pidge suggested, glaring at them. “Those are my cards, guys.”

“Oops,” Nasty said, although he didn't sound at all sorry. “Rule #19—Caught While Peeking. One-cookie penalty from all players. Choose a new hand, Varda.”

Pidge humphed and reshuffled the deck, shooting a hard look at Tilla while she did so. Tilla sniffed disdainfully and dropped a cookie back into the pot.

Shiro let the current game come to its natural conclusion—Hunk won that one with a very well-played Trickster's Meddling—before embarking on his own campaign of conquest. It was a long and subtle one, and for the most part he spent it sidestepping dramatic moves such as Allura's Military Coup and Tilla's Torch-Waving Horde, occasionally winning a few cookies with lesser plays like Rogue Comet and Rebel Leader's Charisma or sacrificing a cookie or two to buy a new card to lull the others into complacency. In the end, however, all of them gaped in astonishment when he laid down his final hand. Tilla squawked in outrage at the perfect spread of Metaphysical cards, and Nasty's narrow eyes bulged dangerously. “Divine Army,” he hissed as Shiro claimed the cookie jar. “Not just a Divine Army, but one with Justice Ascendant. I haven't seen or heard of anyone getting one of those in years. That's the hardest hand to achieve in the entire lexicon, and I know for a fact that I stacked the deck so that it would be impossible to build one. Is this your doing, Tilla?”

The dragon was blinking in perplexity at Shiro's cards and uttered a baffled churr.

Keith snickered. “I made him immune to hexes, remember?”

“I know that!” Nasty snarled, leaping to his feet and waving a vengeful fist at Shiro. _“I,_ at least, do not use magic to fiddle the deck, just good honest prestidigitation. How did you do that? You can't have gotten that hand legally, the Justice card was in my back pocket!”

Shiro smiled and held up a hand. “Three things. The first is that there was a reason that nobody at Galaxy Garrison would play cards with me. Secondly, I've been getting little hunches that turn out to be correct a lot of the time. Thirdly, I've been practicing those dexterity lessons that you've been giving me every chance you get. They worked.”

Nasty yipped and grabbed at his pockets, a particular one of which was indeed vacant. “I was out of arm's reach! How'd you do that?”

Keith smirked and wiggled equally clever fingers at Nasty. “Teamwork.”

Shiro grinned and dipped a hand into the jar. “Want a cookie?”

Nasty gave them both a fulminating glare, and then deflated with a sigh. “Sure. Hah! My Granny always said that I'd get nowhere by playing cards with a fortune-teller. Oracles are just so damned rare, is all. Just don't get cocky, pal, and don't advertise the fact that you can see the game before the cards are dealt.”

Shiro nodded, passing the Unilu a cookie and offering the others some, too. Many a cardsharp back on Earth had come to a sticky end because they hadn't taken proper precautions. Out here, where the people came in a far wider selection of sizes, shapes, and armaments, things could become far more dangerous than that. “I'll be careful.”

“Practice discretion by abstaining from games, at least for now,” Zaianne informed him, waving a hand at the screens. “We've arrived.”

Sure enough, the great, weapon-studded ovoid of the _Osric's Quandary_ floated boldly against the backdrop of Halidex's third moon, surrounded by a swarm of lesser ships. Shiro stared at it in something close to awe; he was no stranger to large starcraft, but this thing took the cake. The only ship that he'd ever seen that was bigger had been the Center itself, and that had been more of an artificial world than anything else. The lesser ships were a wild variety of odd shapes and colors, although the formation they rested in was as neat and orderly as a military commander could wish... or almost. There was one ship, a large, glossy-black craft in the upper-left section that nobody seemed to want to get close to.

“Shussshorim's back,” he heard Pidge mutter sourly, “great. Well, that'll keep the meeting short.”

Lance grunted in disgust. “No, it won't. The Halidexans are going to run us into overtime, taking selfies with them.”

Allura sighed. “Well, perhaps Yantilee will be able to call them to order.”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “Only if the Doom Moose have gotten bored with photo-ops. Just where is the meeting going to be held, Nasty?”

Nasty had been gathering up the cards, and he stuffed the deck back into one of the pouches that hung from his belt. In the same motion, he pulled a small packet from a different pouch and unwrapped it, revealing a cluster of small items that glinted green. Nasty pinned one of those to his shirt, and handed the rest to Modhri. Shiro was surprised to see that the little ornament was a miniature version of the Voltron insignia. Nasty caught his eye and muttered, “Not taking any chances. The meeting's aboard the _Quandary,_ people. Yantilee's opened up one of the old conference chambers, and Maozuh even managed to find a table big enough to accommodate everybody. She sort of had to fudge things to get enough chairs, though. The fleet's grown some since we left.”

“Has it ever!” Keith said, standing up to stare at the enormous crowd of ships. “There are way more ships there than we saw last time. Who are all those people?”

“Not sure,” Coran replied, staring thoughtfully up at the screens. “That might be a Nilsigonian ship there, and a Vaprolite over there, but I could be entirely wrong.”

Zaianne nodded. “You are. The Nilsigons had their homeworld shot out from under them about four thousand years ago, and the one surviving priest-king on their one surviving colony world declared spaceflight to be anathema. The Vaproli were eradicated well before that, when they ceremonially roasted and ate their Governor.”

“Ew,” Pidge said.

Coran sighed and tugged on his mustache. “Yeah, they had a bad habit of doing that. They figured that you couldn't get a proper knowledge of your neighbors without knowing what they tasted like. Alfor managed to stave that off by cloning his left leg for them. That was a feast to remember. Don't look at me like that, we had the fish.”

“Double ew.” Lance said, giving Coran a suspicious look.

Nasty pushed himself up and studied the crowd. “Hmm. Yup, all the regulars are here—Zorjesca, Tchak, Ketzewan, a whole bunch of Halidexans... huh. That bunch over there are Olkari, and those are Walmans, and those are Yitronels, and—hey! Those ships are Elikonian! Got some Kemoptees, too, and... I'll be _pishvalled,_ are those Beronites?”

Modhri smiled fondly at the odd little crowd of small ships. “They are, indeed. A special envoy from the High Nomora, I expect. I wonder how they've been doing? I've been a little too busy to keep an eye on them.”

Shiro smiled, all too aware of what had kept him so busy. “Let's go and find out.”

 

They decided to take the Lions in, if only to give all of those watching ships a good look at the Voltron Force, with their Galra companions following along in one of the _Chimera's_ shuttles. Coran and Nasty had insisted upon coming along as well—leaving the mice and dragons to mind the Castle, since they had shown themselves to be well up to the task—and were riding along with Hunk and Pidge. The black Lion had magically produced a back seat in his cockpit; nobody disputed Shiro's right to take that position, although Allura was well-aware of his yearning look when he gazed upon the familiar controls. He didn't say anything about it and, diplomatically, neither did she; his desire hung in the air like a faint perfume for much of the short trip to the Ghost Fleet's flagship, until a soft voice in the back of her mind whispered, _soon._

From the way Shiro had sighed, Allura knew that he had heard it too. In some ways it would be a relief to turn over the piloting of the black Lion to her friend again, and in other ways it would be a wrench. She glanced down at her hands and saw the possessive way that they gripped the control beams. They would share, she reminded herself; he was the better leader in combat situations, and would handle those while she piloted the Castle, which would also allow Zaianne a far greater degree of freedom. Allura was better at reconnaissance, and would fly the Lion on scouting missions. It would be a bit awkward at first as they found the proper balance of duties, but it would work. They would make it work, and Voltron would never lack for adequate leadership. The black Lion rumbled reassuringly at her again, and she smiled. He was proud of her, and she of him, and together they were as one. Always and forever.

Shiro shifted in the rear seat and muttered, “That is a very large ship.”

Allura gazed thoughtfully at the _Quandary_. It did loom a bit. Not as much as some of its companions did, but like a mountain, it was extremely present. “It is, yes,” she replied, “it's not quite of Death Star proportions, but the Sikkhorans who built it were themselves very large, and they liked to have plenty of room to move about in. I'm told that it was also one of the biggest trade ships that race ever built—a Grand Freighter—before it was reconfigured for combat. I suppose that it does both these days, being a privateer. All that loot, you know.”

Shiro chuckled. “We had privateers too, once. A few hundred years ago before that sort of thing went out of fashion. Most of the piracy on Earth happens either online or in politics now. Amazing, isn't it? Every time I see something new and advanced, I find it being used in a lot of old-fashioned ways.”

Allura hummed thoughtfully, remembering a few examples from her own history. “Cultures evolve much more slowly than technology does. Mother often told me stories about that sort of thing. She did much of the diplomatic and political work for the Altean Stellar Kingdom; Father was... usually too busy.”

“Being a space hero gets to be a habit,” Shiro observed. “It's more fun to chase bad guys than it is to fill out paperwork.”

Allura remembered the mountains of legal forms that her mother's ministers had churned through every single day when she was little. Necessary as that was to the smooth running of a large civilization, it was deadly boring for anyone with the least little bit of adventurousness in their makeup. As much as she herself enjoyed forging good strong alliances with other races, she couldn't help but dread the inevitability of the documentation that such arrangements generated. She would just have to find someone trustworthy to delegate the worst of it to, or get Coran to do it. Ancients knew that it would keep him out of trouble.

“It is,” she agreed. “That's for the future, however. For right now, we must be heroic. The Empire will not give Bericonde up without a fight.”

Shiro made a curious noise. “What are they producing that the Empire wants so much?”

Allura paused a moment before answering; the huge bay doors on the _Quandary's_ lower hemisphere were sliding open to admit them, and she heard Pidge sharing jokes with whoever was on the bridge right now. “I'm told that they are a major trade hub, and that they supply numerous military garrisons with vital materiel. Starship parts, mostly, and components for repair drones and ion cannons, but huge amounts of things like food, uniforms, tools, weapons, office supplies, machine lubricants, and dozens of other necessities pass through Bericonde's ports every minute. They're the linchpin of the Empire's supply lines in this Sector, it seems.”

Shiro humphed. “That makes it a good target. I'll be interested in seeing the details.”

“So will we,” Allura assured him.

They were met in the bay by a group of very large and muscular aliens who swept Pidge up and passed her around for hugs; Shiro was a little relieved that she was wearing her armor, since the smallest of them had biceps that would have made a professional bodybuilder back on Earth weep in envy, although it was very plain that they were being as careful with her as they could.

“Guys,” she said, grinning down at them from her perch on the shoulders of the biggest, a huge gray fellow that wouldn't have looked out of place in a Scandinavian legend, “this is Zardruss, and these others are Imlosh, Varis, Lantich, and Donok'Vah, the best dockjocks on the ship. Zardruss, you've already met my team, but that's Shiro, the other Black Paladin. We sort of had to bring him back from the not-quite-dead.”

The troll-like gray person grinned, showing fearsome teeth, and extended a massive, four-fingered hand. “Good to see you kids again,” he told them, and nodded at Shiro. “You, though, you're the one that landed a fist on Haggar? Varda here told someone, and word got around.”

Shiro nodded and clasped that big hand, flicking a glance at Pidge as he did so, who shrugged. “I did, and paid the price for it. My companions brought me back.”

Zardruss had eyes like a horse's, large and dark and deeper than one would expect at first glance. He gazed thoughtfully into Shiro's eyes for a moment, and nodded. “I see it. Hard trip for everyone, but worth it. You're a lucky man, you know. Got room for this sort of thing in the mythology, Lantich?”

Lantich, who was only slightly less massive than Zardruss and striped in brick-red and cream, rolled his four pale-green eyes heavenward and pursed his lips. Since he had a mouth like a mailbox with tusks, that was an impressive sight. “Yeah, I think so. Gods wouldn't have someone who broke easy for an Avatar. Varda's shown that, and this guy, and we've seen a bit of Hunk's work. Be interesting to see how the other three do the big miracles.”

“Excuse me?” Shiro said, very surprised.

Lantich gave him a sheepish smile, an expression that was very out of place on his ogreish features. “My people worship your big cats, there. Five Gods that combine into one really big God-King. They've five Avatars to serve 'em, for going where the Gods can't go themselves, and they've got Powers. Varda can sing to ships and make them live, serve, or die. Hunk's a Metal-Master. When you get to freeing my homeworld, that's Keroga, out by the Thresonol Nebula, you use that mythology to get their attention. Don't worry about playing on their beliefs, they'll expect it of you, and they'll be mad if you don't. You show them what you can do, too, 'cause they'll want to see. Big and loud as you can, remember that! The bigger the first impression you make, the less likely my lot will be to turn on you, even if you tell them something they don't like.”

Coran tugged at his mustache, giving Lantich a narrow, considering look. “I think that I remember your folk,” he said slowly. “Big world, right, with those two big green moons? Mostly desert, with those long, deep river valleys where the dramishes hatch out of the canyon walls every other year or so, and try to suck people's brains out through their noses?”

Lantich smiled craggily. “Yeah, that's us.”

“Thought so. Never forget a face, I don't,” Coran winked at him. “Do they still tell stories about what happened when Blaytz got a snootful of the happurg brandy?”

“Not in public,” Lantich said darkly. “Galra don't mind us getting religious about the Lions, since they figure that those belong to Zarkon, but they don't like us hailing to any other Avatar but him. Had to take down or cover up all the statues and murals of the other ones. Also had to write up a whole lot of new dogma to keep him and his lot happy. Fake stuff, but it keeps the Governor from making things harder than they are already. It's pretty well entrenched, but this lot should be able to shift it.”

Keith cocked his head curiously. “You think so? In my experience, people don't like having their beliefs challenged.”

Lantich heaved a long sigh. “It's been a long time. Stuff gets lost or made up, and we all know it. Some'll be mad about the truth, but most folks'll accept it. What the God says, goes, and the Avatars're the Gods' voices.”

Shiro had a sudden mental flash of vast stepped-pyramid temples, a little like Earth's ancient Sumerian ziggurats, with carved stone Lions flanking broad avenues thronged with eager people. He saw himself and his team greeting them in a blaze of multicolored light, and the multitudes roared in approval--

He blinked, shook his head to dispel the image, and managed a smile. “We'll keep that in mind. I believe that we're expected?”

The huge blue person—Varis—beckoned to them. “Yeah. There's still a little time before the talks start up again, and Yantilee will want a word with you all, since you've come by here a bit late. Gotta warn you, though. You saw the Black Ship up with the rest of them?”

“Yup,” Lance replied grimly. “That one's kind of obvious. Nobody wants to get too close.”

Varis snorted. “For good reason. She's got a Warrior here as her rep for the talks. Don't be too surprised if you see it up on the bridge with the Captain— _she_ wants a look at you all, too.”

“Wonderful,” Lizenne said sourly, coming up behind them, followed by Zaianne and Modhri, each one wearing a little green chevron pin. “Well, I've always wanted to have a closer look at one of those without worrying about getting my head bitten off. Does the Blade of Marmora have a representative here too?”

Varis nodded. “A few of 'em, plus their leader. Been here all week, which is just as well. C'mon, I'll show you Paladins up to the bridge. T'other Altean can tag along, too. You Galra have to go to the conference room with the rest of the crowd, since the Cap'n and the Talssenemai didn't ask for you. Nasty, you'll want to catch up on the gossip on the crew decks.”

Lizenne raised an eyebrow at Varis, but Zaianne merely shrugged. “I need to talk with my colleagues anyway. May we have a guide? We did not see much of this ship the last time that we were here.”

Varis nodded. “Not a problem. Imlosh'll show you the way. Maybe after you guys get done hammering out the plans, you can all go down to the kitchen for a snack.”

Pidge brightened up. “Is Ronok here?”

Donok'Vah, big, black, and striped with lines of screaming-orange bristles, jerked a pair of thumbs at Nasty. “A certain someone there let it be known that you all was coming. Damn straight the old man and his boy came to see his best niece, teaching schedule be  _ sprang _ ed. Got thamst and thelwisk special for you, girl, and all the cookies. Dwesk's all mad 'cause he won't give her none.”

Pidge turned her most waifish look upon her large blue friend. “Can't I visit them first?”

He laughed, lifting her off of Zardruss's shoulder and setting her lightly down on her feet. “Nope, and Ronok'd say the same! Fleet business first, First Mate. Gotta be safe before you can sit down to dinner. Come on, you lot, we don't have all day.”

“You're no fun,” she pouted, but followed along when he headed for the doors.

“Check in with Doc, too,” Imlosh, a stoop-shouldered, hulking, pine-green person rumbled, and turned a look on Pidge that was nearly as waifish as hers had been. “We've sort of missed Varda Hunt. Even with the booby traps.”

Pidge spun, gave him an evil grin, but continued to follow Varis.

Shiro gave his team a suspicious look. “You left out a few details when you told me what had happened while I was gone, I think.”

Keith shrugged. “There was a lot of it. You were out for over a year, Shiro. We'll bring you up to speed as we go, I promise.”

“Yeah, and the really important thing right now?” Hunk said, waving a warning finger. “When we meet the Captain, Shiro, whatever you do, don't say it. I mean it.”

“Huh?” Shiro said. “Say what?”

“You'll see. Just don't say it out loud.” Hunk made a face. “I did, and dumb things happened, and I wound up as a slave for a week, building arcade games on Rociaport. I liked that part, Medrok and his friends were cool people, but we've got other things to do right now.”

Shiro walked along in mild confusion until the ship's lift took them up to the bridge. It was a large room, of course, with a full bank of controls closest to the screens that had rather obviously been retrofitted some time ago for people smaller than the original owners. Sitting at those controls were a tall orange person with huge ears, what looked to be an enormous blue caterpillar with pink biolights, and a man-sized parrot with red and white feathers; that was only proper, a small part of him acknowledged. All pirate ships should have at least one parrot. Far more prominent in the room were the two strange figures having a chat near the Captain's chair. The smaller of the pair could not have been anything other than the Hoshinthra—Hunk and the others had spent some time describing that people's horror-movie attributes, and if anything, they'd understated its menace. Even though the glittering alien was fully visible right now, standing at ease with its lethal arms folded up along its back, Shiro could tell that it could go from zero to xenocide in nothing flat. The larger figure... Shiro suddenly knew the word that Hunk had warned him against, and was forced to swallow hard before it could escape. The Admiral of the Fleet was not dark green, nor did he have the oak-leaf-shaped spikes of the classic movie monster, nor did he breathe fire or exude massive amounts of hard radiation, but the resemblance was there. Shiro forced himself to concentrate on the obvious differences: the long neck, the three calm, intelligent brown eyes, the four powerful arms, and the ridge of iridescent blue feathers that ran in a bright stripe down the long throat. Yantilee was more like a dragon from a fairy tale than _... oh, God, don't say it out loud. I was warned, and Hunk's warnings are usually good._

“They're here, chief,” Varis said by way of greeting, “the whole crowd, plus one.”

Yantilee looked up from his discussion with the Hoshinthra, and nodded politely. “Almost the whole crowd. The mice and the dragons?”

“Left 'em aboard the Castle to mind the ship, sir,” Coran replied promptly. “Can't leave the controls unmanned, y'know.”

Yantilee seemed to take that in stride. “Good. You'll want to fill them in on the details after we're done. An ignorant crew is a crew that wastes time on dumb questions. I've been hearing some odd things from Tchak, Tepechwa, and Ketzewan, First Mate. Care to tell me some details?”

Shiro's estimation of Yantilee's intelligence shot up several notches at that; there were shades of meaning in that question that went well beyond a mere request for information, and to her credit, Pidge had caught them all. The Admiral valued Pidge very highly, it seemed. Pidge drew herself up and made a report of everything that had happened since she had left the _Quandary_ in a concise fashion that would have delighted even Commander Iverson, with the others filling in details here and there. Throughout it all, Yantilee and his rather unsettling companion–and the bridge crew, he couldn't help but notice—listened in attentive silence.

At the end of it, the Admiral leaned back on his tail and humphed softly. “Might want to send somebody over by Teravan. Allies or no allies, having a big city crunched up just because the Emperor wants to play with a new toy is going to sour their relationship a bit. Haswick, ask Kolivan if he can spare a lad? Three Galra military bases rely on the Teravinchans for their provender, and if they aren't willing to provide anymore...”

“On it, Cap'n,” the caterpillar-like fellow at the controls responded, and muttered into his comms for a moment. “Oh. He says that he's already got someone working on that angle.”

Yantilee smiled. “Tell him to have his man talk to the Chinopri Masons on the next planet out in that system. Those mystics do all the building and maintaining in the Teravan System. That includes the Galra-owned installations, and they hate having their work broken for no good reason.”

There was a soft mutter of conversation, and a chortle. “He didn't know about the Masons. He says good thinking, boss, he'll get his man to pay them a visit.”

“Good,” Yantilee nodded in satisfaction, and then turned his gaze on Shiro. “People go to great lengths for you, Paladin.”

Shiro considered his options, rejected the first three responses that came to mind, and said, “I'll try to make it worth their while.”

“That's the most that anyone can ask of you,” Yantilee said mildly. “I'd say that you're off to a good start already. Think you'll be able to keep up with your team?”

Shiro glanced back at his team, and smiled at their determined expressions. “I don't think that I'll have a choice. They've improved, and they'll see to it that I will, too.”

“And when you are their equal?” Yantilee pressed.

“Then we'll all work together to get even better.” Shiro sighed, knowing his words to be true. “We don't have a choice. Even after we take Zarkon down, there will be a lot of work to do.”

Yantilee considered that. “Good answer. You'll do. Your turn, Talssenemai.”

Before Shiro could react, the Hoshinthra took a long stride forward, its antennae flaring out fully from a skull-like head that lowered until it was on an eye-to-eye level with him... or would have been if it had had eyes. Shiro forced himself to stand still and stare it down; it froze in place, not even seeming to breathe, and they stood there, watching each other in silence for several minutes. Shiro felt a trembling of his nerves that had nothing to do with fear, and it dawned on him that the Hoshinthra were by no means blind. Somehow, he was sure that it was studying him, every bit of him, inside and out, and that it could in some way perceive the Lion down in the docking bay just by looking at him. Dimly, he heard the black Lion growl, although that was not a threat. More of an acknowledgment, although a wary one. The Warleader was dangerous, and she respected things other than mere physical strength. It proved that a moment later by snapping its lethal jaws less than an inch from his nose with a _clack_ that echoed around the room; Shiro didn't move, and not only because he'd tensed up so much that his joints had locked in place.

The Hoshinthra chuffed and let out a long harsh hiss. _“A brave one. The Talssenemai speaks through this person and congratulates you, Champion. Be glad of the gifts that you have been given, by friend and enemy alike.”_

Shiro shook his head. “The enemy hasn't given me anything. They've done nothing but steal.”

The Warrior turned away and began to pace in a circle around him, clawlike hooves clacking on the decking. _“Brave, but young, and unobservant. They have given you knowledge, Human, and have shown you their ways. They have also given you a reason to fight, even as they have given me mine. I have made a choice, and have followed that choice for five hundred years. How will you choose?”_

Shiro suddenly remembered a dream he'd had long ago, a peculiar gift from the dragons. “I've made mine as well. I'm a defender, not a predator. I will protect those who need protecting, no matter who they are.”

The Hoshinthra continued its circling, its antennae canting in his direction. _“Other Paladins have sworn the same. They are dead and forgotten, save one, and he betrays that oath every day.”_

Shiro ground his teeth. “I will not become what I fight against.”

“ _Truly?”_ The Hoshinthra asked, sounding amused. _“And will you be able to see that slow corruption as it occurs, man, as it accumulates over a period of decades? Will you be able to lay down the responsibility that you have taken onto yourself for even a moment? Will you seek to extend your life and your strength in order to carry that burden just a little longer, and at what cost? How can you trust any young fool with the treasure that one would destroy half of the universe to possess?”_

Shiro's breath hissed between his teeth. The Hoshinthra Warleader was right, in a way; those factors had indeed been part of what had chaged Zarkon from a young hero into an ancient monster. He'd seen it happen to the Emperor himself, during that long strange trip through his memories.

“ _Your gifts make you mighty, and will bring you power,”_ the Warrior continued in a hollow, insinuating whisper, _“which has corrupted greater creatures than you. On many worlds, ultimate power awaits—you are worshiped and adored by peoples that you have never seen, never met; when you walk among them, your slightest whim will be holy law. What are you, Paladin? All creatures in some part are what others perceive them to be. Who dictates your being, and whose beings do you define? Who do you exalt, and who do you disdain?”_

“I am not Zarkon,” Shiro growled, his temper rising at the creature's vile suggestions.

“ _Not yet,”_ the Hoshinthra hissed. _“Neither was he, at first. How do you intend to keep yourself from taking his throne, once you have sundered it from him? How will you keep yourself free of what he came to embrace so wholly?”_

There was a clue there, he realized. He was being tested, of course, and a part of him had been expecting it. Nonetheless, the question was a difficult one. A very great many leaders in Earth's history had gone the same route that Zarkon had; most of them had been reasonably ordinary people until they had come into power, but after that...

In some of those countries, they were still finding the mass graves.

He could not say that those temptations would not present themselves to him, nor could he say that he wouldn't be tempted. Whether or not he was strong enough to turn them down was the question, especially years down the road, when the endless rounds of diplomacy and fighting would be getting to him, and accepting a crown and the authority that it brought would make it all so _simple._ How would he convince himself to take the hard road, year after year?

He heard an angry mutter behind him, too faint to make out the words, and a quelling word from someone else.

And that was the key. Zarkon had already been a proud royal when he had first taken up the duties of a Paladin. That pride and high position had been a barrier that had separated him on a deep and subtle level from his team. He had not been accustomed to seeking aid from anyone, and indeed had spurned emotional ties with almost all others. Shiro, on the other hand, was very different; in a way, Zarkon had always been alone. Shiro was anything but.

“I will not become what Zarkon has,” he said calmly, smiling in the face of the nightmare. “How can I? My team will be watching me for fatigue, and I'll watch them. We'll all watch each other for trouble, and act on it when it happens.”

“ _Oh?”_ the Hoshinthra asked. _“How so?”_

The words climbed up his spine and into his mind from somewhere deep within his heart. “We are Of The Pack,” he told the Warleader.

“And the Pack Is As One,” the others chorused softly.

The Hoshinthra stopped pacing, antennae spread wide, and then it began to make odd noises, peculiar little hissing squeaks that ended in a burst of jagged whistles. It was laughing, Shiro realized after thinking for a split second that it might be having a seizure or something. The Hoshinthra tossed its head and pranced gaily, like a show horse, and it was astonishing how lightly so large a creature could move.

“ _Of the Pack!”_ it hissed, clacking its jaws, _“Of the Pack, oh yes, and the Pack must hunt. The Emperor will look into its mirror one day and see only what it has lost. It will come screaming out of the fetid burrow of its own obsessions to take from others what it perceives to be its own, and it will find us waiting for it. Flush it out for us, Paladins, bring it forth, and its hide will hang in Mother's halls and its ghost will be shackled to her Heart along with those of all whom it so foolishly threw away!”_

The Warrior went abruptly still, and for a moment, looked slightly ashamed of itself. _“The Talssenemai speaks through this person and apologizes for his outburst. You have passed my test, Paladin, and I shall tell the Mystics of your answer. Do not be surprised if they summon you and your Pack to stand before them. You need not dread their calling you, for they are not so dramatic as I.”_

“Good to know,” Shiro replied, feeling a little shaken.

“ _Yes,”_ the Hoshinthra replied, and headed out of the bridge.

Shiro let out his breath in a relieved burst, and realized that he was sweating, and that his bones felt like water. He might have sagged to the floor, but his team was at his back, propping him up, and he felt a soft flush of energy come into him from the Lion-bond that steadied his nerves and renewed his strength. “Thanks,” he whispered, and received a reassuring pat on the shoulder from what felt like everyone.

“Sorry about that,” Yantilee said in a subdued voice, “flying the black Lion is a big job, and we had to be sure that you'd be up for it—now and later. You've impressed me, and you've impressed _them._ If nothing else, after that little talk, there won't be anything that my Fleet Captains can say around the table that'll spook you. Tell you what... Keith there never claimed his bottle of Rejolian brandy from me. After the meeting, we can go down to the kitchen and relax with a cup or two.”

Shiro gave the Admiral a thin smile and tried to will the last of the tension out of his shoulders. “Thanks. I may need it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays to everyone out there in the fandom, and as always a huge THANK YOU to those that take the time to show their love for this story. Another chapter might be posted the day after Christmas if I am not comatose by that point. And now, I am going to briefly stand on my soapbox and babble, so feel free to ignore the next bit of word vomit. ^_^
> 
> SEASON 8 SPOILERS AHEAD! Skip if you haven't seen it yet!
> 
> I'm going to say it, I actually liked Season 8 a lot. I admit I wasn't thrilled about the sudden appearance of Curtis (who is this guy?) but on the other hand, seeing Shiro manhandled into a kiss by a man ON A KID'S SHOW was not only enjoyable, but a gigantic step in representation. I remember when a shot like that would have caused serious backlash, and not because of a spurned 'ship. (Besides, part of the fun of being a fanfic writer is figuring out how to make your favorite pairings work even when canon throws you a roadblock.) As for the story itself, I had a lot of fun watching it and following the characters. And Honerva continues to win the prize for Scariest Bitch In The Universe. The fact that she was somehow tragic and relatable at the same time made it even better.  
> And personally? I don't think Allura died. That last shot of the lions showed them heading towards a decidedly Allura-shaped nebula, which reminded me very strongly of Bob's face lit up in the constellations. No, I think she ascended, and is now something similar to what he is. A powerful multi-dimensional astral entity, able only to directly interact with given people through very specific venues. Although I don't see Allura running a game show.  
> Also, if Lance doesn't start popping up Altean magical abilities at some point, I will be very surprised.


	19. New Objectives and Old Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I'll get another chapter up right after Christmas!  
> Real Life: *death metal voice ala Aggretsuko* HATE RAGE AND CUPCAKES! SEE THE MESS THAT MAKES! NEW YEARS WRAAAAAATH!!!!  
> Me: X_X
> 
> Seriously, I am so, so sorry this chapter is late. Things involving work, personal health, and the health of one of the cats all kinda went crazy, and then I spent several days just being brain-dead.

Chapter 19: New Objectives and Old Friends

 

The Bericonde System hung glowing in the air above the table; even if it hadn't had so many plots swirling around it, it would have made a very interesting centerpiece. It was a trinary system, with one big fat old red giant star and a couple of companion white dwarfs, and a startlingly large number of planets, moons, and asteroid belts hung in complicated orbits around them. Many of those worlds and moons supported life, and the ones that didn't were rich in certain rare and valuable minerals and elements. That and its placement between four other large population clusters made it a natural trade hub, and even with the Empire parasitizing off of it, the System was wealthy.

It was also well-guarded. Two of those living worlds had been given over to the Military in their entirety, one being a factory world for the production of starship parts and ordinance, and the other was more or less one big training base for soldiers. There was even a shipyard in the middle orbits, although not a major one, and it mostly did assembly and maintenance of the small- to middleweight warcraft. As a result, the home guard was enormous, and it stood a good chance of being bolstered further by an outside agent.

“My Grandfather is the Head Librarian of the Kithraxen Free Archive,” reported Captain Zorjesca, making a gesture of respect at the Talssenemai's agent. “He informed me not long ago that Lotor was there recently, looking for information on Hoshinthra Warleaders. He seemed to have found what might be a weakness that he could exploit, and might come to Bericonde to try his discovery.”

That seemed to interest the Warleader. _“And the nature of this find?”_

“An adjustment to his fleet roster. Grandfather had made sure that the files showed that smaller, faster ships survived longer.”

The Warleader whistled a laugh. _“They do, but they are better only in that they might flee more efficiently. They sacrifice firepower for speed.”_

Zorjesca gestured a warning. “Not all of them. There is a class of warship that is rather more advanced than most, or so I am told; the Ghamparva reserve those for themselves. Kolivan?”

The dour Blade nodded. “Certain classes of Ghamparva ships, the _Narvorak, Kevrachi,_ and _Vishta_ classes in particular. They are the latest designs from the best shipwrights at the Nelargo Shipyard, and are very dangerous in battle. We have not as yet been able to study any of those in any detail. I cannot offer much more information about them, save that their numbers are as yet few, and the Ghamparva treasure them. Lotor might obtain some for his fleet, but not without making enemies that may well give him some difficulty later on.”

The Warleader clacked her son's jaws and hissed. _“Then I will be generous, Blade. I will test their prowess for you, and might leave you enough of the wreckage to study.”_

Kolivan gave the creature a grim quirk of the lips that could almost, but not quite, be called a smile. “For that much, we will be grateful. Will you accept aid from others, if those ships prove themselves surprising?”

The Warleader paused, antennae rippling. _“From the Paladins. If those new ships are as surprising as you suggest, then no lesser craft may stand against them. Otherwise, they are to keep to the conventional enemy; I do not share my kills.”_

Allura blinked in surprise, but accepted her reasoning. “Agreed. Any craft that can threaten you would be as great a threat to any of the rest of us. Do not hesitate to call, should you need our help, and we will do our best to comply.”

Yantilee tapped a thick finger on the table. “Good idea. That'll save us for the main work. Our job will be to knock out communications, wreck starports, and shut down the factories. That last'll be tricky; many of those factories are automated, but a lot of them use slave labor, and it's generally a good idea to liberate slaves wherever we can.”

Tchak grinned. “Also, as one perspicacious privateer Captain might point out, if we take that factory world intact, there is no reason why those factories—complete with trained personnel—can't start churning out freedom-fighter ships equipped with the Empire's own best armaments.”

“They've got a Sentry factory or two down there as well,” Ophion pointed out and cocked an amused orange eye at Pidge. “I have heard rumors that you can teach those new tricks...?”

Pidge's evil-genius cackle made everyone around the table smile. Sentries got everywhere in the Galra Empire. If the Ghost Fleet and particularly the Blade of Marmora could gain possession of a share of them, then there was no end to the possibilities for gathering information and conducting sabotage.

“This is all very heroic, but we've got the future to think of,” one of the Halidexan Captains pointed out, “the problem of keeping the Galra from taking the System back. Bericonde is a valuable place, and the Emperor isn't going to like losing it. He also has a lot of Commanders and Generals jockeying for his favor, and that makes it an even bigger target.”

A Beronite Captain waved a claw at the Paladins. “Perhaps the Machine-Master might steal a few of the enemy's dreadnoughts, to add them to our forces?”

“I don't know about that,” Pidge told the motley crowd. “Haggar beefed up the aetheric shielding on their ships, and it's tough to crack, even with the Lions backing me up.”

“Actually, I was thinking about that,” Keith said thoughtfully. “I burned the shielding off of a cyborg when we hit the Center on that rescue mission. I don't know if it was the same sort of shield, but if we worked at it together...”

Hunk thumped a fist on the table. “If you guys can pop the shields, I can shut down their engines, and Lance can freeze up some of the moving parts—they use hydraulic systems here and there—and if Allura can give us a boost, who knows what we'll be able to do? We won't know until we try it, though. Think we can do it, Lizenne?”

The Galra witch frowned, tapping her claws on the table. “I don't see why not. Pidge has already proven her skill as a shield-cracker, and we've been training Keith to pop hexes. I'd suggest another session of meditation, to see how well your talents combine without actually getting shot at. While you're doing that, I'll put a shield and a few hexes on one of the training deck's drones, and you can practice on that.”

Zaianne chuckled. “Activate it first. Those warships will be trying to kill them, so a bit of early combat practice couldn't hurt.”

“Sez you,” Lance grumbled, rubbing at a shoulder. “Coran turbocharged the gladiator last time, and it knocked me across the room!”

Modhri smiled. “You should see the Ladies here when they spar in the envirodeck. They play rough.”

Lance glared at him. “And what would you call a turbocharged Gladiator that's all over hexes?”

“For them?” Modhri flicked a small salute at his wife and stepsister. “Entertaining. Which reminds me, Kolivan; I don't doubt that some of your men know how to pilot a dreadnought. Will they be willing to teach the liberated Bericondes how to do so, or some of the Fleet's people, if the Paladins can steal a few for you?”

Kolivan hesitated before answering, but nodded. “We can. The sooner that the System is capable of defending itself, the better.”

That caused a ripple of comment among the crowd, Shiro noticed, and sympathized. It was one thing to have a subversive splinter group of the oppressors on one's side, but it was quite another to have them start training people to use the oppressor's own weapons against them. No few of Yantilee's privateers were looking worried, thoughtful, or openly avaricious. Nonetheless, it was necessary in order to keep the Ghost Fleet's forces from being stretched too thin. Remembering the questions that the Hoshinthra had asked him, he stood and dipped a small bow at the representative from Bericonde's small but stubborn resistance group. “Calm down, everybody. Kolivan is right. The whole point of this Coalition is not to replace Zarkon with some other ruler, who might be just as bad as he is, or worse. It is to restore the liberty and independence of each and every inhabited world, and to establish strong friendships and alliances between them, whether it's done with mutual defense pacts, or trade agreements, or just because we like one another. No one people can police the rest, not without becoming exactly what the Galra Empire has become. If we can come together and make sure that everyone can hold their own, perhaps even agreeing on a basic code of conduct, then there is nothing that says that we can't find a way to form a true confederation, with every people represented in Council.” He smiled. “Sitting in council sessions might be boring, but if we can get Yantilee's people to referee, I'm sure we can work something out.”

There was laughter at that; Yantilee had been quashing arguments among this enormously diverse group of people ever since the talks had begun, upholding the truism that no Elikonian would put up with a spat that lasted for longer than five minutes. “So, who will be in charge?” Yantilee asked.

Shiro shook his head, knowing from bitter experience that no answer would please everybody. “That's up to all of you to figure out. Perhaps you can just take turns on a case-by-case basis. Where I come from, we elect someone to do that job, although that doesn't always work out too well. That's a matter for later; for now, you are the Admiral, and we still need to figure out our positioning for the upcoming fight. Who wants to handle that enemy fleet over there?”

It took another hour and a half to hammer out a tentative plan, contingent on whether or not the Paladins could indeed steal the enemy's ships from them, and if so, how many. Since the actual attack wouldn't happen for another few days, they would have time to check. The other Captains had to be satisfied with that, and most of them headed back to their own ships to contemplate it when Yantilee declared the meeting adjourned for the day, leaving the ones that Pidge referred to as the “old friends” sitting at the table. Those were Tchak and Ketzewan, of course, and Zorjesca, plus Voan Lenna and the Grand Duke Dablinnit for good measure. Dablinnit whuffled through his long nose and turned off the hologram of the Bericonde System with a blunt, four-fingered hand, quirking his furry brows at his companions. The man looked like a dalmatian would, if dogs had gone through the same evolutionary process that had produced Humans, and Shiro was having a hard time resisting the temptation to fondle his ears. “Good work, Yantilee,” he said in a gruff voice. “Even if this doesn't go as we'd like, it'll still ruin the Imperials' day.”

Yantilee shrugged all four massive shoulders. “He who carves his plans in stone might as well beat himself to death with them. We'll get the choreography sectioned out a little more evenly when we know what Varda and her lot can do to help, beyond blowing things up.”

“'Tis Early Days Yet,” Ketzewan said reassuringly, “And To Grow Too Fast Is To Invite Chaos. A Vine Might Grow With Great Speed And Twine Itself Into An Impenetrable Mat, But It Lacks Strength, Or Even Enough Coordination To Position Itself Efficiently. A Forest Does Not Mature In A Single Year, You Know.”

“Yeah, but it has to act fast if there are perambulating strangler trees around,” Tchak said, standing up and stretching. “Nasty things, those, they'll yank just about anything up by the roots to steal a fertile spot. They'll go for small animals too, when they get too big to move. The really big ones'll go for people.”

Voan Lenna pulled a... yes, it was a foldable lorgnette out of a pocket and gave Tchak a quizzical look through it. “Odd plants your planet has. I can hope that those trees have some natural predators.”

Tchak grinned evilly. “Oh, yeah. Some insects, some birds, some big guys with axes and torches, and my personal favorite, petard succulents. They look like drum cactus, all soft and smooth and squashy, but if a strangler tree goes for it, the root-knot explodes with enough force to split the thing open from root to crown. Then all of the scavengers and omnivores come from miles around to feast. Strangler tree pith is great when pickled. Petard plant seeds are good, too, but we only take a few of those. We _like_ petard plants, and keep a lot of them around.”

Zorjesca chittered in amusement. “They are certainly a good metaphor, if one equates the Empire with a strangler tree. We will need a great many petards to fell that tree, and some way of keeping those who come to feed in line.”

“That's going to be a big job,” Hunk murmured, and looked around at his teammates. “Anyone else here remember what happened to the Roman Empire when the Goths came knocking?”

His fellow Humans nodded glumly, but Yantilee asked, “Who?”

Zaianne leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “An ancient Human civilization. Quite a successful one, for a time, but it had much the same bad habits as Zarkon's does. In the end, that Empire simply grew too large and corrupt to govern properly, and its neighboring tribes brought it crashing down. While the principal city survived, the culture that built it did not, and other civilizations were still picking the bones centuries later. Little of worth survived, beyond the language and some of the better architecture. There was no one with enough authority to stop the worst of the atrocities, you see.”

Dablinnit humphed. “Some would say that the Galra deserve it.”

Zaianne shrugged. “So did the Romans. The innocent still suffered and died in their millions, and the entire continent was in turmoil for centuries afterward.”

Allura waved a hand. “Ideally, we'll want to engineer a reduction of the Empire—to leave their Core Worlds and the less troublesome colonies intact, and ease them into the Coalition without too much strife. There will be lingering resentments, possibly for thousands of years, but it's better than another extinction event.”

“And to facilitate that, we'll need a new Emperor,” Lizenne said quietly. “Galra society descends directly from a pack structure, and we must have a single authority per given Domain. Perhaps more than one Emperor would be better—one for the Core Worlds and a few for the outlying colonies. The problem will be in getting candidates for those posts that we can live with. There are those who will insist that only one of the Imperial Lineage will suit, and most of those are more trouble than they're worth.”

Coran pulled at his mustache, gazing thoughtfully at the past. “Common problem, that, yeah. Ran into that sort of thing with one of your ancestors, Princess. That was old King Faros the Prolific. Thirteen sons and six daughters, all born within a decaphebe of each other, and some of 'em were twins or triplets. You'd think you'd feel sorry for his wife, but Queen Egregia had the constitution of a fireplug, was built like a wardrobe, and enjoyed every minute of it. Some of the kids were happy to wander off and breed songbirds in the countryside, but the ones who stayed at home got up to all sorts of cloak-and-dagger skulduggery. Faros put a stop to that after his eighty-second birthday party, when they switched out the cake that had dancing girls in it with one that was full of assassins. Quite against the rules, you know.”

Keith boggled at him. “How'd he stop them?”

Coran smirked at him. “Had 'em play Dix-Par for the throne, and every one of them that was caught cheating was sterilized on the spot. Given their ambitious natures... well, let's just say that the Heir wound up being one of those songbird fanciers. That was King Forthan the Ornithologist. Good man, very patient, married a lady who was an avid falconer.”

Modhri chuckled. “Would that some of Zarkon's get could be weeded out like that. I encountered a few while serving as an intern in the Center, and I didn't like any of them.”

Yantilee waved a broad hand. “Oh, one or two are okay. Ronok's got one of 'em peeling roots in the kitchen right now. Want to go and have a look at him?”

Pidge perked right up. “Yes!”

Dablinnit waved a negative. “Not me. I've seen him once, and that was enough. I'd rather go and see if my engineers can fit one of those Grezzani Hatchcrackers into our bays.”

Zorjesca clicked agreeably. “I've room, I think, for a couple of them myself. Ketzewan, Voan Lenna, Tchak, were you interested?”

Tchak smirked. “If only to have something to bait Tepechwa back with.”

“One Of My Crew Absconded With One Of My Larger Long-Range Shuttles Not Long Ago,” Ketzewan admitted sourly. “Faint-Hearted Fungus-Ridden Fool, So He Was. That Particular Slot Might Better Be Filled With Such A Craft, And I Do Thank You, Coran, For Keeping Them Safe For Us.”

Coran, pleased at this praise, responded with a bow. “Delighted, old chap, and I wish you the joy of them, assuming that they'll fit in the launching bay.”

Voan Lenna tucked his lorgnette away into a breast pocket and adjusted his hat. “My ship's too small for one of those, I'm afraid, but I'm not averse to helping my colleagues take measurements. Shall we?”

“Indeed,” Ketzewan replied, tapping the controls on his hover-planter and rising up a little above the table. “Good Day, First Mate, And May Your Studies Bring You Wisdom.”

Yantilee and the others murmured polite farewells as the Fleet Captains filed out, and then the Admiral propped a pair of fists on his hips. “Let's go and see if the possible Heir to the Empire is done peeling spuds yet.”

 

The kitchens were in their usual state of bustle and clatter, with huge pots on the boil and ovens going at full blast, assistants prepping mountains of ingredients and mixing sauces in a bewildering variety of colors and aromas. None of that mattered to Shiro at the moment, and indeed all other considerations paled before what he saw sitting at one of the long worktables now. Shiro had been told about this particular Galra, but it hadn't been enough of a warning. His blood froze when he saw the massive shoulders, the narrow, pale eyes, and the craggy, vaguely reptilian features, and his shock at the sight of them struck him into immobility in the kitchen's doorway. Someone nudged him in the small of the back, muttered, “You're blocking traffic, Shiro,” and then called out, “hey, Kelezar, how's life treating you?”

The huge Galra looked up and gave them a slightly embarrassed but entirely genuine smile. Shiro blinked, realizing that it could not possibly be Zarkon sitting there on a kitchen stool, peeling large orange tubers with what looked to be a Marmoran blade. Particularly not while wearing a loose T-shirt that had “Not The Emperor” printed on it in at least thirty languages. For another thing, this much younger man lacked the long scar on his face that Zarkon sported.

“Could be better, could be worse,” Kelezar said cheerfully, and his voice was another disconnect—deeper than Zarkon's and a rumbling _basso profundo_ that was nothing like his grandfather's smooth baritone. “Thanks for the shirt, Lance. It's come in handy.”

Shiro tore his eyes away from the Imperial look-alike and stared in mild amazement at Lance. “You gave him a shirt?”

Lance grinned. “Made it up for him just before he left the Castle. He sort of needs it.”

“Got that right,” Kelezar said, tossing his root into a large stewpot. “People go all goggle-eyed and panic a lot when I don't wear it. It was funny the first few times, but it gets old after a while. Have a seat and help me with these? Ronok says that if I don't fill the pot, I don't get dinner. Hey, Yantilee. Nice work at the planning table just now. Who's this guy?”

“That's Shiro,” Pidge said, pulling another stool out from under a worktable and shoving a peeler into Shiro's still-nerveless hands. “Remember? We told you that we had a missing teammate.”

Kelezar rumbled deep in his chest. “Grandpa had him?”

Shiro sank down onto the stool with a feeling of surreality, and chose a root from the nearby sack. They smelled a little like kabocha squash, and that was surprisingly comforting. “Haggar, mostly, but yes. Pidge and the others... had some trouble rescuing me.”

Kelezar nodded and took another root. “I'll ask my boss about it later.”

Hunk joined them, being no stranger to spud-peeling. “You were watching the meeting?”

Kelezar flicked a finger at an odd device on a nearby shelf. “On screen. I'm not allowed up there in person yet, 'cause I make people nervous. Can't think why.”

“It's your natural style and grace,” Pidge said, pushing Lance and Keith toward the table. “Where's Ronok?”

“In back. He's doing inventory right now, and Helenva and the kid are helping.” Kelezar sighed and tossed the freshly-peeled tuber into the pot. “Another one of those 'do it or you don't get fed' arrangements. Kaslep, that's the head cook aboard ship right now, got a little sloppy with the stacking, what with all the guests at odd hours right now, and Ronok's setting things—and him—to rights. Kaslep'd complain, but the whole crew is so happy to see the old man and his boy right now that he doesn't dare.”

Yantilee smiled. “So am I. I'll need him to get Keith's brandy out of hiding.”

“You have to hide your wines?” Allura asked Yantilee, sitting down next to Coran and picking up a peeler, Lizenne, Modhri, and Zaianne following her example and taking up roots and peelers.

“Not surprising, that,” Coran said, sniffing curiously at a tuber. “Military men on all sides of the law do love a sip of the cup that cheers. Often more than a sip, and often more than a cup. I assume that this ship's crew is no different.”

Yantilee nodded and leaned back on his tail. “I try to keep it to a minimum. Plosser wouldn't have any drunkards aboard, and it was one of the few good things about him. Doc's the exception to the rule, of course, since Ophlica medics are magic chemists and as skilled as they are rare. Plus, being drunk doesn't mess with his judgment. Just makes him happy and sleepy, and a spin in a high-quality 'fresher takes care of that. He's got a nose for the good stuff, is all, and just about the only safe place to keep a stash is in Ronok's secret lockroom.” He frowned slightly. “You know, I don't think that I've ever found out where that room is.”

“Nor will you,” snapped a new voice, and Shiro turned to see a tall, elderly Simadhi Galra in the official apron of the _Quandary's_ head cook, and was sharply reminded of Ulaz. This old fellow could have been the Blade's uncle. He was followed by a Galra boy who was carrying a bottle of some sort of dark red liquor. “The location of the Secret Pantry is no more public than the key to the ship's treasury, and for much the same reason,” the old man said firmly, taking the bottle from the boy and placing it on the table among the heaps of root parings. “I was sworn to secrecy by my predecessor when I came aboard, and have sworn my own successor to secrecy as tradition demands. I have to; some of the things in there are either dangerous or worth their weight in diamonds on the black market. Here's your brandy, Yantilee, Haswick let me know what had happened on the bridge, and for Gods' sake, don't tell Doc that you've got it. Rejolian hooch can't be had for love nor money out here.”

Pidge skipped forward and wrapped her arms around the old man's waist. “Doc,” she declared, “will have to wait his turn. Hi, Ronok! I'm back!”

Ronok's smile was like the sun coming out after a rainy morning, and he sank down on one knee to hug her properly. “There you are, love,” he said fondly, “you've been terrorizing the universe, I expect, and doing the impossible whenever you can.”

She giggled. “A little. We found Shiro.”

“Good! Very good,” Ronok said, looking up curiously at the extra Paladin at the worktable. “His sacrifice wasn't wasted, then. You look surprisingly intact for a fellow who's run afoul of the Emperor's witch.”

Shiro clenched his right hand, reassuring himself that he had regained more than he'd lost. “I needed to be put back together.”

One frost-colored eyebrow lifted, and his pale eyes studied Shiro intently, noting how undeveloped his left arm was when compared to the right. “So I see. Nonetheless, you're still breathing, and sane, and that's more than many can say.”

“Far too many,” Lizenne said sourly, remembering what they had found in Haggar's cold storage.

“You're looking well, Ronok,” Modhri said, tossing a root into the pot. “Are you enjoying your new job?”

The old fellow's expression lightened again into a satisfied smile; Shiro recalled what Pidge had told him of this man, and he could see why Pidge had gravitated to him. “More than I thought I'd be, at my age,” he said with a respectful nod in Lizenne's direction. “Many thanks to your magnificent Lady there. As for my work, I'm happy in it. Zoallam designed and built an excellent cooking academy for me, and the Halidexans aren't afraid to learn something new. Fast learners, too, which means that my boy here doesn't have to hold himself back for them.”

And that would be Tamzet, Shiro remembered, who had gone from being a prisoner of war to being the happily-adopted nephew of this proud old man, and all because Pidge had a fondness for furry ears. The boy smiled shyly at them. “It's hard work, but it's fun, and you get to meet some neat people. Like this guy. Hey, Kelezar, do the voice for them!”

Kelezar rolled his eyes. “A little busy here, Tamzet.”

Tamzet giggled. “Oh, come on, just once.”

Kelezar sighed, but nodded. He paused for a moment, staring meditatively into the middle distance, and his features took on a harsh, cold expression that made trickles of ice creep up Shiro's spine, and from the look of his team, his wasn't the only one. “I am Emperor Zarkon,” he said in a voice that was very nearly identical to his grandfather's. “And I am sitting here peeling roots for tonight's stew, which had better be good.” Kelezar's mask cracked a faint smile, and the pale-yellow eyes glinted humorously. “After dinner, I might put on one of those soluna silk bodysuits—the sparkly pink one would be nice—and perform an interpretive dance routine, assuming that Tamzet doesn't beat me to it.”

Shiro, his team, the Alteans, Lizenne, Modhri, and Zaianne stared gaping at him in astonishment for a long moment, and then dissolved into hoots of hysterical laughter. It took some time for them to stop, and they were all limp and out of breath, sides aching from laughing so hard. “That... that has to be the funniest thing I've ever heard,” Hunk gasped. “You... you're really good, man. That was awesome.”

Kelezar smirked and reached for another root. “Yup. Just need the right outfit and a streak or two of face paint to match Grandpa's scars and age lines, and you can't tell us apart on screen. Still have to work on the attitude, though. Grandpa's got no sense of humor, and if he ever had any soft spots in him, they've fossilized. Kolivan's got all sorts of ideas for misdirection, and with Jasca helping, we can really mess up the Military's coordination. She sends her love, by the way, and so does Clarence. Depending on how things go, they might join us at Bericonde.”

“Hey, that would be great!” Pidge said, reaching for another root. “How are they doing? Are they having fun? Does Clarence still have that dead guy? I bet that they're really good in a fight, too—I mean, Clarence was built for it and I'll bet that the Blades have upgraded him a bit, and I know that we gave Jasca some pretty awesome guns. Are they friends?”

“They are both treasures,” a new voice said, and everybody but Ronok and Kelezar jumped slightly in surprise at the sudden arrival of another person, seemingly out of thin air. “And we treasure them accordingly.”

Kelezar looked up and smiled lovingly as a frost-furred hand caressed his face, and Shiro knew that he would never mistake him for his grandfather ever again. Even in the most intimate of Zarkon's memories, the ancient Galra had never felt that deeply for anyone, not even Haggar. The tall, powerfully-built woman standing behind Kelezar showed a clear family resemblance to Ronok; _Helenva,_ Shiro recalled, who had not only helped Allura out of a tight spot, but had staked a most definitive claim on a man who might one day become Emperor.

“You're getting better at that,” Tamzet said critically, “I never saw you coming. Is everything stacked right in the pantry now?”

She nodded, although with a slight frown. “We've sorted out the inventory, but some things have gone missing. Mettic paste, mostly, and a few tubs of tinitric honey. Kaslep's gone off to shake the Nantileeri down for whatever might be left.”

Keith looked confused. “What would those little guys want with peanut butter and honey?”

Lance shrugged. “Sandwiches, maybe? My cousin Carlos is a huge fan of peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches, even though they always made him really sticky. I think that he was trying to get sticky enough to climb walls. He never managed it, but Aunt Lucia sure did that one time when she found his sticky handprints all over her fresh paint job. They'd just redone their living room.”

Ronok snorted. “They'll gobble down the mettic paste however they can. The honey's for one of their bug farms. Galpurn crawlers love the stuff, but something about their body chemistry makes the honey in their guts ferment almost instantly. Since Nantileeri can't metabolize alcohol unless it comes prepackaged in a galpurn crawler, their drinking parties tend to be a bit disgusting. They're sloppy drunks, too.”

Hunk made a face. “Drunk velociraptors, yuck. Time to put the honey in the Secret Pantry, huh?”

“Or get another strongbox from Maozuh,” Ronok said with a smile that told them all that he did not miss having to outsmart that pack of scaly little thieves. “But how are those two live-ships doing? Stop trying to distract your uncle, girl.”

“Knowledge or death,” Helenva teased, waving a finger.

Kelezar caught that hand in his own enormous one. “The boss said it was okay. Those two magic people made 'em, so they've got a right.”

She cocked a stern eyebrow at her man, an expression that the Paladins had seen Lizenne use on Modhri; this was lover's banter, and no one was willing to interrupt them. “And the rest of these people? What right do they have?”

Kelezar let go of her and leaned an elbow on the table, which creaked as he rested his chin on his hand. “Hmm? Let's see. The other Paladins, sure, they were there when Clarence and Jasca were put together. Ronok's fine, since if we don't spill, then we don't get dinner. Tamzet lost his family 'cause Lotor's an ass. Coran's good 'cause nobody believes his tall tales anyway. Zaianne's one of us, and Lizenne's got a bone spear and an oath of _kheshveg_ hanging fire. Modhri's got no love for witch nor Emperor, they've taken him down for parts once already and no one likes that.”

Amused, Helenva waved a hand at the other kitchen workers, some of whom were watching them curiously. “And those?”

“Speak really quietly,” Kelezar said calmly, paring a bad spot out of his root. “They're also pirates. If Zarkon shows up for dinner, they'll poison his soup. Traditional.”

She had to concede the point there, so she sat down and accepted a peeler and a root from Lance. “We've been getting along very well with both of them,” she said, making quick work of peeling. “They don't actually get as much combat time as they would like, since our engineering corps have quite fallen in love with both of them, and refuse to risk them in battle too often. Jasca in particular gets snippy about it. And yes, they both still have their resident ghosts.”

“Ghosts?” Shiro asked, a little surprised. Magic he could believe in, having had it directly applied to him more than once, but ghosts were a little bit of a stretch.

Lance rolled his eyes. “Ghosts. Hunk built one right into Clarence's basement. He's okay, they give him a cup of horath and he gives them good luck. That's how it's done, right?”

Kelezar smiled and tossed his root into the pot. “More or less. One of the gunners says he comes up for a chat sometimes, late at night, but I've never seen him.”

Lizenne gave Helenva an interested look. “Does Tzairona have anything to say?”

Helenva sobered. “She does, now and again. She wants to go home.”

Modhri sighed sadly. “To fetch her man, and see to her children's freedom. We'll get to it, but it would not be wise to go anywhere near the Core Worlds right now. Not until the rebellion is widespread enough to keep the entire Military fully engaged elsewhere.”

Allura nodded firmly. “By that time, we may be in a position to free Quolothis as well. I insist; my people have waited a very long time.”

Modhri patted her hands in sympathy. “No more than mine have. It will be done, Princess.”

The simple confidence in his voice raised eyebrows around the table. “You sound very sure of yourself, Modhri,” Ronok said.

Modhri smiled and pulled the last root out of the sack. “I am sure. I cannot say exactly why I am so certain, but I am. Perhaps it's the extraordinary company I'm keeping.”

Lance blinked and stared around at his companions. “Really? Everybody here looks pretty normal to me.”

Modhri chuckled and pared the peel off of his root with speed and efficiency, tossing it into the pot with a satisfied flick of the wrist. “Everyone thinks that they and their peers are perfectly normal. Even the legendary. I know what I am sitting with around this table.”

“Legends?” Allura asked in a small voice. “But we aren't... I mean, my father...”

Modhri waved a reassuring hand. “Your father and his team are remembered even now in tales of yore. You all are greater than they were already, and will only become more so. I've done a little studying myself. As great as they were, Allura, they could not do half of what you and your team can. Now that your team is once again complete, there will be no stopping you... so long as you don't get too carried away.”

Tamzet nodded. “Yeah. One of my instructors used to say that overconfidence was a monster that could eat the strongest fighters. He had the robot leg to prove it. Is that enough roots for the stew, Ronok?”

Ronok cast his expert eye over the pot and humphed quietly. “Yes, that looks about right. Just tip that into the big slicer, Kelezar, you've earned your dinner. Once that's done, we'll go out front with that bottle of brandy; I'll get us all some cups, and then I want to hear what has been going on. In detail, mind you! I've heard some very strange rumors lately, and I want facts instead of fluff.”

Yantilee, who had been staying quiet and listening so expertly that the others had nearly forgotten that he was there, reached over and plucked the bottle off of the table. “Sounds good. I've had a chair that fits me set by the big table. Join you there.”

 

Rejolian brandy, the Humans discovered shortly afterward, was smooth, faintly sweet, with flavor notes reminiscent of roast pork, apples, and for some reason, avocado. It was also very strong, and was traditionally served in tiny cups carved from fire agate. Ronok even had a set, which delighted Coran. “Oh, yes, they took their gems almost as seriously as they took their liquors,” the Altean said cheerfully, admiring his shimmering cup. “They were absolutely convinced that each viand had a corresponding stone, and that you couldn't have one without the other, or evil spirits would come by the following morning and triple your hangover. Not that you hadn't drunk enough of the Demon Drink to explode your skull already, but they figured that it didn't do to make it worse. Red and orange stones for the distilled drinks, yellow for the beers, blue for hard ciders, green and purple for wines, and white or clear for the stuff that your sinister uncles made in secret distilleries on moonless midnights. Pink stones were for the expensive liqueurs, of course, and horath was always served in cups carved from obsidian. You could always tell the quality of your drink from the quality of the stone it was served in, and some of the ones for mixed drinks were very beautiful. I've got a small collection, myself. Any tavernkeeper caught trying to sell inferior liquors in expensive cups was pickled for three days in strong vinegar.”

“A time-honored tradition,” Ronok said, sipping delicately at his own cup. “You can always tell a bad Rejolian barkeep by his body odor, since the vinegar they use has a tang to it that doesn't fade in a hurry. Good for getting stains out of carpets, too. Now, tell me a story, all of you. I've heard tales of you fighting giant squid, evil plants, nearly killing the Emperor, pulling the very soul out of a city-crushing giant, and raising the dead.”

Shiro, who hadn't had a sip of anything stronger than numvill since the farewell party right before he'd left for Kerberos, and who was also inhabiting a body that hadn't tasted alcohol ever, and whose nerves had been more than settled by the first tasty cup of brandy, lifted a hand. “The last one's true. I was the dead guy. I sort of missed out on Zarkon and the monsters, though.”

Keith gave him a worried look, and then glanced down into his cup. “Is this stuff safe to drink?”

Ronok nodded. “It's fine, I checked. You'll have to be careful if you're not used to it, is all, same as any other intoxicant. Varda, why is a dead man sitting there looking mildly crottled?”

Pidge giggled. She was feeling just a bit fizzy between the ears as well, and “crottled” was a good description of Shiro's expression. “Well, right after we left the _Quandary,_ I remembered that dream...”

This was a much longer and more detailed story than what she had told Yantilee earlier, and by the end of it, the bottle was empty, and Ronok and the others had gone very quiet. Ronok saluted them with his cup and drank the last drops with proper reverence for both the rare liquor and the wild tale. “Impressive,” he said quietly. “Modhri, you are right that we sit among legends.”

Yantilee smiled. “And I am proud to be a part of theirs. For now, though, the legends need to be fed. We could certainly use something to sop up the brandy in our systems.”

Ronok sniffed the air. “Hmph. Well, at least they didn't burn the porridge this time. Extra thelwisk seeds, eh, Varda?”

“Yes, please!” Pidge replied happily.

“Then come and help get it dished up,” Ronok said sternly, but his eyes were kind as he gazed upon his slightly tipsy niece. “Come along, the lot of you. First one to finish their assigned tasks gets first crack at the good stuff.”

“What, me too?” Yantilee said, although he was already heaving himself out of his chair.

Ronok waved them toward the kitchen doors with an impatient hand. “Of course. Nothing brings a high official back to reality faster than lugging stewpots, except maybe washing them out. You've come up in the world, all of you, and it's my job to see to it that those swelled heads don't lift your feet from the ground.”

Pidge, who had washed many a stewpot in the not-so-distant past, sighed and said, “Yes, Uncle Ronok.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy (late) New Year to everyone, and I hope that this year is ten times better for us all than the last. I'll try to have another chapter up within the next few days now that things are starting to return to normal. And meanwhile, thank you to everyone that took or takes the time to comment. It makes us smile even when the world is burning. ^_^


	20. After Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter I actually wanted to post before or on Christmas, but life got in the way. You'll see why. ^_^

 

 

Chapter 20: After Party

 

Dinner, at least after they'd finished stacking plates and ladling out portions, was every bit as good as anything Hunk had ever come up with for them, and even better in spots. Whatever else Ronok might have been in life, he was certainly a master cook, and Shiro was content to sit back in his chair and listen to his stomach make happy noises to itself. While the food had indeed soaked up the brandy, he was still feeling a little of its influence, and it was in a pleasant haze that he watched his friends interacting with Yantilee's crew. Hundreds of peculiar aliens, some very strange indeed, had poured into the huge dining hall for the evening meal, and Pidge seemed to know them all. She was currently chattering happily with the three people who had been working the ship's controls up on the bridge earlier; as he watched, the tall orange fellow leaned over and asked her a question. She nodded, stood up, and then smacked the man across the nose with one practiced swat. He smiled nostalgically as his ears dropped off, thanked her, and then went to dispose of his discarded auditory organs.

Hunk was at a different table, talking animatedly with a crowd of people in mechanic's coveralls. One of them handed him some sort of device. Shiro couldn't identify it, but could see that it was clearly broken. Hunk examined it from all angles, and then his eyes grew distant, his expression one of deep concentration, and the device mended itself. Shiro blinked in surprise as Hunk handed it back. He'd been told what his teammates could do, but this was his first time actually seeing it.

A little unnerved, he turned his eyes to Allura, who was involved in an intense gossip session with Helenva, with Kelezar and Tamzet sitting nearby, listening in with interest. Allura smiled slyly at one point and made what looked like a suggestion, which brought a laugh out of the Blade. Helenva responded with a few words and a string of gestures that Shiro couldn't interpret, but they brought a blush up on Kelezar's angular features, and Tamzet looked very embarrassed. Allura burst into hoots of laughter and made a snide comment that had Helenva laughing right along with her; Tamzet and Kelezar shared a nervous look and scooted their chairs out of arm's reach of the ladies.

Lance was sharing war stories with a different group of crewmen, ones that had the lean and dangerous look of professional fighters. As Shiro watched, the young man jumped to his feet and began acting out what looked to be part of a battle in the Lions. Probably one of the Robeast battles, to judge by his acrobatic capering. The crewmen gave him a rousing cheer, and he basked happily in their admiration.

Coran was regaling another large group with tales of times past, probably descriptions of the scrapes that King Alfor and his team had gotten into, or odd little facets of daily Altean life; the latter was no more peculiar than the former. Alteans had lived hard and played hard, and they were remarkably tough. From the look of the crew, they were listening with the usual mixture of amusement, amazement, and frank disbelief that such tales usually inspired. One of the larger ones shook his great broad head and disputed one of Coran's claims, offering a huge, muscular arm. Coran, mustache bristling dangerously, offered his own slender limb, and they engaged in an arm-wrestling contest. After a few long moments of grunting, straining, and trying to crush each others' finger bones, Coran slammed the crewman's fist to the table hard enough to make him yelp. Coran clapped him on the shoulder in a friendly manner and passed him another bottle of the local beer.

Keith... he couldn't see Keith just now, but he could see the young man's mother, who was in a serious, low-voiced conversation with a few of her colleagues. They were listening respectfully, and replying in quiet, even voices. Shiro remembered his own first encounters with the Blade of Marmora, and how grim, paranoid, and forceful they were, and he wondered exactly how highly Zaianne ranked among them if she could command good manners from those people.

Lizenne and Modhri were together as always, Modhri sitting quietly with his chin resting on his hands, yellow eyes gleaming benevolently as his wife examined a crewman's arm. The man's arm had been broken some time in the past, and Shiro's sharp eyes could see that the bone had not healed straight. She worked the fingers carefully, and Shiro saw that three out of the seven digits were uneven as well. Lizenne nodded, closed her eyes, and began to chant something softly under her breath. A faint glimmer of gold ran over the man's skin, and he watched with wide eyes as the arm and fingers visibly straightened. She patted the mended hand in satisfaction and then turned to address the tall glass and bowl full of tasty fried things that Modhri shoved before her.

News of that would get around, Shiro knew. Crewmen of all sorts gossiped like starlings, and nothing spread faster than news of a healer. Any thug could break things and beat people up, but when there was someone around who could make the hurting stop, even if she was a Galra... Shiro sighed inwardly, feeling the weight of his responsibilities, and knowing the comfort of having others to share the burden. Every wound that they healed, every tyrant they toppled, every planet that was freed would make it that much easier to reduce the chaos that the Empire's fall would inevitably cause. They would need all the help that they could get; the Galran peoples had been encouraged by their Emperor to abuse and exploit every other race out there for ten thousand years. Shiro remembered his own world history classes in high school, and particularly the lessons that had focused on France during their Revolution; what would happen out here would be far, far worse if they didn't do all that they could to control it. Guillotines would only be the start...

_Something in the back of his mind opened like a flower, and suddenly he was standing in what looked to be a town square, wearing his armor and fresh from a battle. He was tired, thirsty, his muscles aching, and he could smell his own sweat. Huge crowds of an unfamiliar people lined the huge open space, their cheering loud but peculiarly hollow and distorted, as though they were underwater. They waved and called eagerly as a pair of husky individuals dragged a struggling prisoner forward between them. A Galra, he realized, battered and bruised but still defiant, hands bound and jerking hard against the rope that someone had tied around his neck. The uniform was torn and rumpled, but Shiro recognized it as that of a high official, and watched with a peculiar detachment as they forced their prisoner to kneel before him, the Galra staring up at him in fury and terror, teeth bared defiantly and body quivering._

_One of the aliens handed him a sword, offering him the privilege of executing the prisoner himself. He could feel the weight of the blade in his hand, the excellent balance of it, saw the light glinting off of the razor-sharp edge--_

“Shiro?” someone said right in his ear, breaking the trance. “Shiro, are you all right?”

Shiro jerked, blinked, and swallowed hard on a dry throat. Keith was standing next to him, eyes dark with concern. “Huh? Yeah, I... I sort of zoned out, there,” he said, reaching for his glass and draining it in a gulp. He was suddenly very tired. “I'm okay. Where have you been?”

“With me,” Nasty said, stepping out from behind Keith. “I needed to talk to Maozuh about some new knives, and this kid wanted a look at the ship's Armory. What's going on inside that skull, Shiro? The last time I saw someone with that expression on his face was when I had to share a cell with a gloshni addict. Before you ask, gloshni causes very intense hallucinations, and people take it to try to become soothsayers. On some worlds, big prophets rake in big profits, so it's a popular drug. Illegal as any hell you care to name, but popular. Nobody slipped you any weird green powders, right?”

“What? No! No.” Shiro could still hear the watery roar of the crowd in the back of his mind, and shook his head in an attempt to dispel it. “It's that oracle thing that Lizenne said I had. A glimpse of the future, I think. Someone was asking me to publicly execute a tyrant.”

“Oooh, not good,” Nasty said darkly. “I mean, one or two are okay if it's in an actual battle with the other guy trying to rip your head off, that's legitimate, but if you go around doing public executions, the crowd gets a taste for blood and they go completely _zwaggok,_ and before you know it, the whole town's dripping with gore. I hope you won't indulge them.”

The muscles in his upper right arm twitched, and the distant roaring in the back of his mind turned confused, disappointed, and then died away. His heart eased, and the last of the otherworldly feeling eased off. “I won't,” he said, letting out a relieved breath. “I can't. I'm not that kind of person. I _won't_ become that kind of person.”

Keith draped an arm around his shoulders, and Shiro took great comfort from that. “Good. I'd hate to see you turn bad on us. Do you want to go back to the Castle, Shiro? It's been great, but it's getting late.”

Shiro looked around at his other teammates, and saw that they were still enjoying themselves. “I hate to disappoint the others, but yes, soon. I'm not quite up to late nights yet, and it's been a long day. Want to keep me company for a while?”

“Sure,” Keith said, plopping down in the chair next to him.

Nasty muttered something about getting another plate of fried thishwizzles and wandered off. They sat in comfortable silence for a little time, watching Lance act out yet another battle to the delight of his audience, hamming it up so much that he accepted a blue bottle from one of them and drank down half of its contents without thinking to ask what was in it. Whatever it was, it had been fairly potent, and he wobbled and fell over, flopping down flat on his back and giggling. Keith sighed. “Idiot.”

Shiro shrugged. “He's old enough to start learning, and a hangover or two will teach him caution. Speaking of learning... I'm going to need to learn how to control my visions.”

Keith hummed quietly. “Yeah. We'll probably head back to Omorog after Bericonde, so that Loliqua can give you some pointers. Lizenne's no good at seeing the future.”

They glanced over at the witch's table, where she had conjured a glimmering ball of golden aetheric energy above her palm, which she dropped into the unsteady hand of a nervous crewman. He flinched, but didn't drop it, and rolled it from hand to hand in amazed delight.

“That would be good.” Shiro rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. “Lance would like that, too.”

Keith puffed a faint laugh. “He had a lot of fun there, and the Princess is a nice lady. Her kids are cute, too. More importantly, she really knows her stuff. Maybe tomorrow you and the rest of us can do a few of the group aetheric exercises together, just to get you used to it. It's tricky at first, but it gets easier every time.”

“I'd like that,” Shiro said, quite truthfully; he'd enjoyed the closeness to his team that the first few lessons in the Art had brought him. “Anything that brings me closer to full recovery.”

Keith smirked. “Even having Lizenne shoot lightning bolts at you again?”

Shiro chuckled. “Maybe not that. Not just yet.”

An argument broke out on the far side of the room, where a group of crewmen had been playing some sort of card game. Shiro and Keith paused to watch as Yantilee stood up, the huge Admiral rising out of his seat like a giant reptile from the ocean, and strode across to the noisy group with the awesome inevitability of a falling comet. A few words from the giant was all that it took to end the argument, and Yantilee ambled back to his seat, exuding saurian majesty. Shiro and Keith glanced at each other, knew that they were thinking the same thing, and coughed softly because it was better than blurting certain unwise words.

“Imposing,” Shiro managed after a moment.

“Yeah,” Keith agreed.

They were saved from further comment by the arrival of Pidge's second adoptive uncle; Ronok pulled out a chair and settled down next to them, watching the fun with a proprietary pale-golden gaze. Once again, Shiro was struck by his resemblance to a man that he had respected, for all that they had known him only briefly. “Ronok,” Shiro said by way of greeting, and received a nod in return. “Something wrong?”

The old man waved a reassuring hand. “No. Just a fair warning. I passed a bottle of Partherian moonshine to Doc to keep him away from the brandy, and he's just now sobering up. I suspect that in about ten or twenty minutes someone will tell him that Varda's aboard, and he'll want to check her over.”

Keith smiled. “Varda Hunt?”

“The whole crew will insist.” Ronok cocked an amused glance at him. “Will you join that stampede?”

Keith burped. “Maybe not. I think I overdid it at dinner a little, and that brandy made me fuzzy.”

“Take it easy, then. My little niece plays rough.”

Shiro was a little surprised at the warmth and pride in the Galra's voice; it was not something that he was used to hearing out of anyone but Modhri, whom he had privately labeled as a special case. “You love her, don't you?”

Ronok nodded. “I do. I don't know if she's told you about what happened to my family, but her arrival on this ship was timely. If she had not claimed me as her uncle when she did... well, I might not have lasted out the year. Galra do not take being alone well, especially not Simadhi.”

“The pack mentality?” Shiro asked.

“That, and the fact that Simadht is something of a closed system,” Ronok replied, “our odd habit of living in cave systems means that we tend not to mix much with outsiders, and that makes us value our own kin even more. Most of the time, anyway. It certainly makes us more willing to work together than most Galra, and Helenva tells me that we're naturals for the Blade.”

Keith hummed, remembering Kolivan's light coloring. “Kolivan's Simadhi, right?”

“Halfblood. At least one of his nearer ancestors was from Galran Prime, which is where he got the red markings in his fur,” Ronok's hands described the Blade's unusual markings with a couple of expressive flicks of the fingers. “One of my neighbors had similar ancestry, and he had a broad red streak that went from brow to heels down his back. It isn't all that uncommon; Primals, Palabekans, and Namturans often find Simadhi to be very attractive, and we rarely have trouble finding mates when we venture out into the wider universe.”

Shiro scratched at his chin curiously. “Speaking of the Blades... you wouldn't happen to know of anyone named 'Ulaz', would you?”

Ronok's lined face creased in a wry smile. “I knew several. It's a common name on Simadht, it being the name of one of our historical greats. You're asking about Helenva's colleague, I expect.”

“Yeah,” Keith said, remembering the act of self-sacrifice that had saved them all. “Did you?”

“No. Not that particular fellow.” Ronok sat back, picking at a tooth with one thumb claw. “Helenva tells me that he came from the Hukolivera Cavern System, which was clear across the planet from where House Chalep'Thora—our Lineage-home—was. Mind you, we might have been distantly related. Simadht wasn't a large colony in the beginning. To tell you the truth, it was little more than a hideout for a very minor Royal House and its dependents and retainers at first, plus a few desperate allies who were clinging to the Queen's skirts for survival.”

Keith cocked the old man a curious look. “They were forced off of the homeworld?”

Ronok nodded absently, watching a rather wobbly Lance attempt to flick a folded-up snack wrapper between a crewman's upheld fingers. “Our original home on Galran Prime was in a series of deep river valleys. My great-great-grandfather used to tell us tales of the ancient days, when we owned that river system from the headwaters to the sea, and grew rich off of fishing, trade, and the metals and gems brought up from the secret mines along the more obscure tributaries. Alas, our neighboring Domains were greedy and powerful, and during the last series of big conflicts before the Sisterhood War, they forced my ancestors from their rightful home. Unwilling to see her people scattered and made into beggars in the streets of our stolen cities, Queen Sholeir poured the last of her House's wealth into building a colony ship, and she took away all who remained faithful to her. The only habitable world as yet unclaimed within that ship's range was Simadht, the inside-out planet, where the surface was nothing but sterile stone, and where life thrived only beneath it.”

“Sounds nice,” Shiro said politely.

Ronok snorted. “Hardly. It had been passed over by all the other colonization programs as unsuitable for our preferred way of life. They weren't wrong. The Queen claimed it anyway, on the basis of the fact that nobody else would possibly want to take it away from us. Even so, it wasn't easy to adapt to the place, and the colony nearly failed.”

“I can imagine,” Keith said thoughtfully, “Mom says that she visited the place once, and she told me about the cavern-cities and underground seas. It was nice, but she was half-crazy from claustrophobia by the time she left.”

Ronok smiled. “And your nerves start to twitch just thinking about it, eh? Yes, most Galra are an open-air bunch. My lot get nervous if we don't have a nice solid roof over our heads. It's genetic. The original colonists were no happier about living in those dark, rather damp caverns than you would be, but they had nowhere else to go, and they weren't particularly numerous. According to the calculations, the colony might have lasted perhaps six to eight generations before inbreeding would have become a serious problem.”

“Enter a hero,” Shiro guessed with a smile.

“The First to bear the name of Ulaz,” Ronok confirmed. “He was the Queen's chief scientist and a bit of an adventurer, and he had no intention of allowing the misfortunes of his people to overtake them. He didn't have any qualms about acting without permission, either; the Queen was a bit upset when he stole the one working long-range shuttle she had, but forgave him when he returned from his trip—the sneaky bastard had broken into three separate gene-banks back home on Galran Prime, all owned by the Queen's enemies, I might add. He'd stolen the best sample collections, too: the strongest witches, the most brilliant scientists, the finest physical specimens, and the greatest artists. Ulaz just happened to have been a master geneticist, you see, so he knew what to look for.”

Keith smirked. “So, your people owe him for their classic good looks, huh?”

Ronok ran long fingers through his crest of silvery, silken hair. “That, plus a number of other things. Simadhi have the best eyesight of all Galra in low-light conditions. We are very disease-resistant, our hearing is extremely acute, and we excel at working in tight quarters. We're above-average in strength, speed, and agility, and it's difficult to frighten us. We lean heavily toward the arts and sciences, and we're very good at doing a lot with a little. We had, in fact, emerged as a power to be reckoned with on the political scene well before we'd discovered our planet's enormous lodes of rare minerals. We don't leave our planet often, but when we do, we are welcomed wherever we go.”

Shiro hummed thoughtfully. “I'm surprised that there aren't more of your kind in the military.”

Ronok bared a long canine fang in a sneer. “No. Simadht has a long history of refusing to submit to tyranny; first through our escape from the Homeworld, then against our neighboring Colonies who wished to forcibly extract our wealth from us, and then against the Twin Empresses during the Sisterhood War. Zarkon has done us no favors during his reign either, and the destruction of my own Lineage by the Ghamparva did not make my people any friendlier toward him. We're a tad insular, I'm afraid, and we don't forget the wrongs that others do to us.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “Actually, you might want to keep that in mind. Sometime in the future, Voltron and its allies will enter the Core Worlds Region. What are your plans for those?”

Shiro blinked at him. “I'm not sure. We haven't planned that far ahead yet. I'd rather we did as little damage as possible.”

Ronok nodded. “Good. If you hope to gain allies among those worlds, go to Simadht first. Helenva tells me that our Lineage was by no means the only one giving aid to the Blade of Marmora.”

“I'm surprised that Zarkon hasn't wiped you guys out,” Keith said, scratching at one ear. “I mean, if that sort of thing pops up too often--”

Ronok lifted a finger and gave the young man a sly smirk. “We're also quite secretive, and what he doesn't know, doesn't hurt us. Simadht is the most isolated of all the Core Worlds. Other Galra do not like visiting, even for a short while. We do not like leaving our home, and won't unless we are forced to. We don't even have much contact with our neighbors, aside from business and trade. We make a number of products that the Empire is loath to do without, but mostly we make _no trouble._ We are ignored by the high and mighty, and that allows us a good deal more freedom than the other worlds can claim. Korbex would be your next best bet, if only because they've never liked the Golrazi, and Kelezar over there is half-Korbexan.”

They glanced over at Kelezar, who now had Helenva in his lap and a happy smile on his face. Tamzet had made his escape to Pidge's table and was now chatting with her and her friends, while Allura had joined Coran in the informal arm-wrestling championship that he had started.

“His hooking up with Helenva doesn't hurt either,” Shiro observed thoughtfully. “Zarkon was engaged to marry a Simadhi Princess, once.”

Ronok's eyebrows lifted. “Was he? There were rumors of an engagement, but it was never formally announced.”

“They never finalized it,” Shiro told him. “Haggar got in the way, and the Princess died during the destruction of Golraz.”

The old man frowned down at his hands for a long moment. “That makes a great deal of sense. Great-Great-Grandfather did mention a lost Princess, once, sometime during the reign of Zonorok, the last King of Simadht. One of the old fellow's daughters went missing and was never found. His favorite daughter, at that—beautiful, wise, a potent witch, and a talented musician. Not long after she vanished, the King and Queen became the ringleaders of a plot to assassinate Zarkon. One that rather obviously failed.”

Shiro shuddered at memories that weren't his own; Zarkon's wrath when he'd discovered that plot had been dreadful.

“You'd think that he'd have wiped you guys out back then, maybe?” Keith asked.

Ronok gave him a sharp look. “You've a one-track mind, boy. Stop that, it's rude. Zarkon couldn't do any truly major damage to us in those early days; he had just lost the Lions, and the Golrazi's own battlefleets had been smashed to bits by the far greater armada that had destroyed his homeworld. He did not yet command the fleets belonging to the other worlds. He did have a few of the old Imperial fleet commanders answering to him, ambitious sorts that later parlayed their loyalty to him into becoming the new nobility, but that wasn't enough to go around shattering planets yet. The technology hadn't advanced quite so far at that time. In any case, if he'd started torching off the Core Worlds, every last one of them and every ally they could bully into helping would have attacked him all at once. He was more interested in avenging himself on the Alteans and their cronies, anyway, and it was all he could do to scrape up enough warships for that. Were you ever told how badly fragmented the Old Empire was at that time?”

Shiro hadn't, but Keith nodded. “That's right. Rhonorath's death had left everyone really messed up.”

Ronok grunted in distaste. “That's putting it mildly. There was open civil war among Rhonorath's brothers and cousins, the Colonies were out to get as much as they could grab for themselves, there were dozens of alien races who had the same idea, and all of that and more had been going on for decades. There was a Council of sorts on Galran Prime, which was basically a crowd of princes who had banded together—when they weren't trying to assassinate each other, anyway—who still commanded most of the starfleets, and were dead set on getting the rest of the Empire firmly under their thumb. The King of Golraz—Zarkon's grandfather—said no, and that's why the planet was destroyed.”

“Which made Zarkon flip out completely, and took Voltron with him,” Shiro said, remembering the black wrath that had suffused Zarkon's entire being, so strongly that it had affected the others through the Lion-bond, driving them mad for long enough to destroy all life on one planet and severely damaging another. That kind of fury burned up a lot of energy, and only when Zarkon had neared collapse from sheer exhaustion had the black Lion been able to tear his bond out by the roots, and only when Zarkon had slumped unconscious from that terrible blow had Alfor and the others been able to free themselves from his hold. “From the sound of things, it didn't slow him down much.”

“Not really. He just gathered up what he still had, and with Haggar supporting him, he eradicated the Council and every other rival he had to the Throne. Over a thousand rivals, truth be told, and all of their supporters and allies. Hundreds of thousands died to cement his claim, which upset the rulers of the Core Worlds. The man had to go, and his witch with him. They failed.”

Keith tapped a finger on the table. “You might want to ask Helenva to introduce you to Jasca, who was there when it all went down. You might learn something interesting.”

Ronok sighed. “Great-Great-Grandfather Tandrok told me quite enough. Zarkon came to our world, raging with the fury of a thousand burning suns, and blasted the entire Royal Lineage down to ashes. All five hundred and thirty-seven members of the Line Direct of House Hap'Simadht'Kadro ceased to exist. A few second and third cousins escaped, but from that point on, Zarkon himself became our Emperor. The same happened to all the other Colonies, and the Homeworld as well. We've humored him ever since then for survival's sake, but we don't like it, and the Ruling Council spends most of its time working around the Governors that he assigns to administer us.”

“They'd jump at the chance for independence if we offered it to them, then,” Keith mused. “No, wait, they'd be really wary about it, right?”

Ronok nodded. “On Simadht, Voltron is remembered as a destroyer, not a defender. Zarkon was the black Paladin, remember, and we still have recordings from that time that show him using that big robot of yours to fire-polish an entire planet. We have no doubt that he would have used it on Simadht as well, if Alfor and the others hadn't taken the Lions from him. The Council will not know you, nor will they trust you; not until you give them proof that you will not crack our world like an egg. It isn't much, but it's ours, and we're fond of it.”

Shiro smiled. “We won't, and we'll keep anyone else from trying. We kind of have to; Pidge would probably kill us if we messed up, just because it's yours. Incidentally, just what would convince the Council to take us seriously?”

Ronok opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by a message that crackled in over the PA system.

“ _All crew, please attend,”_ a slightly snippy voice said, causing everyone to look up. _“It has come to my attention that the First Mate has returned, and after some considerable time; she is overdue for a checkup. The person who brings her to the clinic will be awarded a brand-new glyssop spinner. That is all.”_

A ripple of anticipatory laughter passed through the crowd. With a whoop of glee, Pidge shot past their table on the way to the doors, grinning like a demon. A moment later, almost the entire population of the room stampeded out in hot pursuit. Lance attempted to follow, but wound up sagging awkwardly onto the floor as his legs refused to hold him. Hunk ambled over and tried to pull him to his feet, but the blue Paladin was embarrassingly floppy.

“What's glyssop?” Keith asked.

Ronok humphed quietly. “A sort of candy. Sucrose-based syrup, usually flavored with jinta concentrate, and spun out into masses of fluff with a special candy-spinning device. Too sweet for me, but most of the crew like it.”

“They have cotton candy in space?” Hunk said eagerly, juggling a limp, vaguely protesting Lance. “I want a cotton candy machine! Here, hold this.”

Keith yelped as Hunk dropped Lance in his lap and hurried out after the crowd. Lance groped awkwardly at Keith's breastplate, gurgled, and grinned foolishly. “Hey, you're pretty comfy, Keith. Nice and firm and... hmmm... not fuzzy enough, man. When you gonna start growing purple fur?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Not right now. You're drunk, Lance.”

“Hmmmm-yup!” Lance nuzzled Keith's neck and tugged at a lock of Keith's hair. “Maybe a little bit purple here. You smell nice, y'know that? Oh, yeah, I'm drunk. Haven't felt like this since I misht... mistook a bottle of Uncle Diego's moonshine for a bopple... bottle of cream shoda. I'm all tingly!”

“Do we have to worry about side effects?” Shiro asked.

“That depends on what they slipped him,” Ronok said, and then took hold of Lance's chin and smelled his breath. “Hmm. From the tang of it, I'd say that they gave him a half-bottle of lithro. Ethanol, brewed from classhet stalks in an old fuel canister, with a few sprigs of tulwop for kick. He'll have a vile headache tomorrow and will spend some time on the sanitary unit—he'll be sick both fore and aft, I'm afraid, but he'll be fine once he clears it. Rh'attz likes to brew the stuff in one of the parts storage rooms when nobody's looking, and Yantilee lets him because there's nothing better for getting the oxidation off of warp coils than lithro. Even horath can't quite get that nice a shine.”

Lance giggled again and waved a finger erratically in the air. “Shiny! That's me, alright! I'm the shparkliest... sparkliesht... something. Really shiny inside right now. Any shinier and my nose would glow. Like Rudolph. Hey, what happens if a Doom Moose drinks this stuff? Do their noses glow?”

Shiro, remembering the monstrous creature from the bridge, couldn't help but laugh. “I don't think so, Lance.”

Lance chortled. “It'd be cool if they did. Like Rudolph. Hee hee! Rudolph the Shark-Toothed Hell Deer.”

Keith's expression, already embarrassed for his teammate, grew martyred. “Lance... please, no.”

Lance would not be suppressed and began to sing, loudly and badly off-key. “Rudolph the Shark-Toothed Hell Deer... had some very shiny teeth... and if you ever saw him... you would need some clean new briefs...”

“ _What_ is going on here?” Allura asked, walking up with Coran at her back, both of them trying not to laugh.

“All of the other reindeer,” Lance sang irrepressibly, “used to scream and run away... they never came too near him... 'cause he'd eat them any day!”

Outside, Pidge shot past the doors at a dead run. A moment later, what had to be at least two hundred strange aliens stampeded after her. There was a distant shout of “Osric! Five, thirty-two, and twelve!”, followed by surprised yelps and screams.

“Then one foggy Halloween, Alice Cooper came to say,” Lance continued cheerfully over the background clamor, “'Rudolph, with your teeth so bright, how 'bout we rampage tonight?'”

Allura wasn't impressed. “Lance, you are inebriated! How do you expect to uphold the dignity of the Voltron Force like this?”

Coran sniffed and tugged at his mustache. “Oh, come on, Princess, this is nothing. The blue Paladins have always had a tendency to get sloshed at parties whenever they could. Probably something to do with their orientation to the element of Water. Why, his predecessor Blaytz routinely made a spectacle of himself, and  _his_ predecessor was legendary for it! Mind you, if I'd had to share a team with the black Paladin of that time, I'd have drunk heavily too. Very heroic, but a terrible drama queen. Couldn't so much as scratch his tail without a half-hour's operatic expostulation first.”

Caught up in the creative spirit, Lance was oblivious to everything around him. “Then how the reindeer feared him... as they shouted out in dread... 'Rudolph the Shark-Toothed Hell Deer... please don't bite off my head!'”

Outside in the hall, Pidge sprinted back in the other direction, and this time she'd added another hundred or so crewmen to her crowd of pursuers. Including, Shiro noticed, Hunk with a huge butterfly net and a flock of what appeared to be blue-green velociraptors. He cast a sidelong look at Yantilee, who had been watching all of this with mild amusement. “Is the floor show usually this good?”

The Admiral smiled. “On this ship? This is pretty normal. My crew's just happy to have Varda back, is all. Best First Mate we've ever had, even when she's not here.”

Lance hiccuped and leered suggestively at Shiro. “Hey, Shiro, anyone ever tell you how good you look? Lotta—hic!—lotta folks out there'd like to see that,  _all_ the way up, and  _all_ the way down. 'M the lucky one, 'cause I get to see you in the hot tub. Th' other guys're cute, but you...? Mmm,  _mm!”_

“ _Lance!”_ Allura gasped as Shiro went very red around the ears.

Lance went cross-eyed at the sound of her voice, and managed to focus on her. “Oh, no need to be jealoush, Allura, you're awesome too. You're so pretty, and you make me wanna.... you _all_ make me wanna... wanna dress you up.”

“What?” Shiro said, and flinched back from another suggestive leer.

“Oh, hecks yeah,” Lance said, and waggled a finger at him. “You'se all skinny now, but when we get you all muscled up, I'm'a make you a tux outta that soluna silk. Yup. Gotta show off that bod, bossh, it's too good to washte on the armor. An' Allura, she gets shilk too. She looksh _awesome_ in shilk. Modhri showed me that pic he took from when we got shold... Holy _crow,_ she'sh nishe to look at!”

There was more shouting from outside, and the stampede went by again, completely ignored by almost everyone still in the dining hall. Lance, however, had an excellent view of his teammates running hard, and chortled. “Hunk 'n' Pidge, they're too cute for silk, though. I'm'a make them fuzzy suits. Hunk'sh our ever-lovin' teddybear, and Pidge is a little mousie! Gotta hug both. All night long.”

Pidge came dancing by the door again, whirled, and shot her bayard at someone who had gotten a little too close for her comfort. There was a crackle of green energies, an outraged howl, and then she dashed away when the whole crowd stampeded after her again.

Observing this, Lance grumbled, “Oh god, the mishe. But hey, can't leave you out, Keith.”

Keith gulped. “No, really, please do.”

Lance nuzzled at his neck again. “Velvet. Nice, deep-pile, dark red velvet,” he whispered hungrily, “extra plush, sho I can pet you all day. And at night, I get to take the outfits off... hee hee! Take 'em off... for desshert.”

Allura edged away, not quite believing what she was hearing. She'd known that he had difficulty controlling himself around the ladies, but this was something else again. “Dessert?” she asked nervously.

Lance chortled. “Oh, yeah, desshert. Shweet, shweet lovin' for desshert. You're so smooth, you make me want to get a big bowl of whipped cream an', an', an' a spatula, and jusht slather it all over you, and then--”

“Lance,” Keith groaned, utterly mortified.

“--Shlurp you right up!” Lance giggled. “Pidge, too, she's so little and cute. And you too, Keith.”

“ _What?!”_ Keith squawked, and tried to shove Lance off of his lap, but Lance's long arms wrapped around him in an inescapable glomp. 

“Oh, yeah, you. You're a grump, but you got somethin' shweet under it. Shomethin' nishe. Hunk too, he'sh a... he'sh a marshmallow all the way through. Chocolate. Yeah. Cream for 'Lura 'n' Pidge, maybe mocha for Shiro, shome brandy shauce for you, Keith... Hunk gets chocolate. Maybe I'll jusht build a harem and put you all in it. I've alwaysh wanted a real harem. Alwaysh thought I wanted lotsha pretty girlsh before all thish, but, naahhh, you guysh are the besht. Not Coran, though. Creepy-assh mustache givesh me the creepsh.”

Coran humphed irritably. “Young man, I'll have you know that I have been kidnapped and held in harems with gratifying frequency throughout much of my career, and the mustache was very popular every time.”

Lance stared at him owlishly. “Not in mine, dude. I keep waiting for it to... to drop off and chashe the mice around the Cashtle. Like a big, orange, hairy shpider. Grossh.”

Lance burped and then passed out, whiffling gently into Keith's shoulder. Keith sighed, gave Lance a disgusted look, and cast an apologetic glance at Yantilee. “Well, that could have gone better. Look, I hate to break things off short, you've been a great host, but—gah, Ronok, could you help me move him over into that chair? My legs are going numb. Thanks. But we need to go pour Lance into bed.”

Outside in the hall, there was a squawk from Pidge, and someone shouted triumphantly, “Got 'er! I got 'er! Candy machine's mine!”

Someone else, sounding suspiciously like a certain yellow Paladin, shouted, “Varda Toss!”

“Oh, no way, I caught 'er fair and—hey!”

Yantilee nodded understandingly and flicked a finger at the doors, through which Pidge could be seen sailing through the air and spouting a blue streak of alien cursewords, tossed enthusiastically from one group of her adoring fans to another. “That won't take much longer. Doc'll give her a quick once-over, maybe give her a dose of vitamin booster, then turn her loose. They'll all be the better for the exercise. Good for morale, too.”

“But very silly,” Allura sniffed.

Ronok smiled. “Hey, now, silly's important. You have to keep your sense of humor in our line of work, or you stop laughing and start screaming. Screaming's cathartic, but it upsets people, and after a while it becomes hard to stop. Or worse, you go quiet, sometimes for years, and when you go off bang you wind up taking the whole ship with you.”

Allura saw the shadows in the old man's pale eyes, and knew that he'd come dangerously close to that stage at some point in the past. “Some days, it's more difficult than others to remember that, but thank you for the reminder.” She reached over and patted Lance's head. “Fortunately, we seem to be blessed with a bottomless well of it.”

“Treasure him, girl,” Ronok murmured, “annoying as he might be at times, that bubbly nature is your best defense against despair.”

The conversation turned to lesser matters at that point, interspersed with the occasional sight of Pidge flying by the doors, yelling graphic threats and insults every time. Eventually, Hunk backed into view, waving his arms and yelling, “I'm open! I'm open!”

A moment later, a ballistic Pidge landed in those arms. “Suckers!” Hunk yelled, and took off for the clinic at top speed, the crowd hot on his heels.

Pidge must have pointed out the shortcuts to him, for they did not see the crowd again, and a little while later, Hunk ambled back in with a boxy device under one arm and Pidge draped over his opposite shoulder. “Hey, guys, I won! Doc's a pretty cool guy, he even had the user's manual, and he showed me how his antidote-maker works. If I can make us one of those, we won't have to worry too much about poisons later on.”

“Handy,” Shiro said, all too aware of the danger of venoms. “What happened to Pidge?”

Hunk patted her rump. “Doc said that she was fine and that I've been keeping her nice and healthy, but she hasn't been getting enough sleep, so he sort of poofed her with an atomizer full of something pink and she flopped right over. It's a good thing that Green will follow the others when we go, isn't it? Oops, and Blue, too.”

Lance snored, dead to the world.

Keith sighed. “'Fraid so. Where are Mom and the others?”

Hunk set the glyssop spinner down on a table and handed Pidge over to Ronok, who cradled her fondly. “Talking with Kolivan. Blade stuff, with a side order of magic. They say that we can go back to the Castle now, and not to wait up 'cause they'll be a while. Can we? I'm a little pooped. Oh, hey, Nasty, ready to go?”

Nasty had sidled in behind him and attempted to pick his pockets out of habit, an effort destined to fail where suits of space armor were concerned. He gave it up for a bad idea and ran his hands over his freshly-refilled knife bandoliers instead. “Pretty much. I've got all the gossip that I can hold and Maozuh had some good blades on hand, plus some lousy cheap ones for monster-stabbing. I'm good. Heh. And so are Varda and Lance. Been through their pockets yet?”

“We have to live with them, Teach,” Keith said, standing up and stretching. “That's Lesson #11—picking your targets. Let's get back to the Lions, guys... unless you want to keep her, Ronok?”

Ronok had been stroking Pidge's hair gently, his eyes a thousand lightyears away. “Don't tempt me,” he sighed, pushing himself to his feet. “I've missed her, even though I have Tamzet with me and Helenva visiting as often as she does. I'll carry her to her Lion for you, since you've got your hands full with that one. Take care of her for me, and come visit us on Halidex as often as you can.”

“We will,” Allura promised, touched by the deep affection in his eyes. “We will be doing a great deal of work with the Fleet anyway, so that shouldn't be too difficult to arrange.”

Ronok nodded gratefully, and then had to smile as Hunk and Keith tried to wrestle Lance to his feet. The lanky blue Paladin was as limp as a wet dishrag, and seemed to have doubled in sheer dead weight; it was very difficult to manage his arms and legs, which seemed to be everywhere, especially with Hunk trying to carry his glyssop spinner at the same time. Allura and Coran rushed to help, but that somehow made it worse.

Yantilee snorted in amusement and got up. “I've got him,” he said, lifting the passed-out Paladin in a pair of enormous hands and draping him neatly over a shoulder. “Let's go.”

 

The trip back to the Castle was an easy one, thankfully, the green and blue Lions having known that their pilots were incapacitated, and it took only a small amount of juggling to get Pidge and Lance safely into bed. Hunk dropped his candy machine on the kitchen counter and then headed off to his own room with an enormous yawn, and Allura, Nasty, and Coran headed up to the bridge to check up on the mice. This left Shiro and Keith standing in the hall, quite alone in the vast, largely empty ship.

Keith looked at his friend and saw a faint tightness to his expression that told him of a certain, secret stress held too long under strict control. Keith smiled and said quietly, “It's okay, Shiro, we're back on the Castle and there's no way he can hear you. Let it out.”

Shiro's brow wrinkled up and he tensed, feeling the great upwelling of pent-up emotion within himself. He had been born and raised in Japan in a household ruled by a traditionally-minded father and a mother who had dearly loved certain genres of science-fiction, specifically the live-action rubber monster-suit movies so popular in his homeland, dating from 1954 to the present day. Such an upbringing had left deep imprints on his psyche that demanded an outlet despite the odd situation he was in.  _“...Kaiju...”_ he squeaked under the massive pressure of cultural imperative.

Keith, gauging the problem with a practiced eye, gave Shiro's upper back a firm, open-handed swat. Startled, Shiro lurched forward, head up and fists clenched, and he roared,  _**“GOJIRA!”** _ in a voice that echoed up and down the hall before sagging, gasping for breath, against a wall. “Thanks, I needed that. I was stuck.”

“Anytime, chief,” Keith said with a grin, and then yawned. “G'night.”

“Goodnight,” Shiro responded, and headed toward his own rest, shaking his head at the strangeness of the universe.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Spanch and I are insane. It's a burden we bear....and enjoy immensely.


	21. Life Lessons

Chapter 21: Life Lessons

 

Lance awoke the following morning feeling like a major peasant revolt. His nervous system, the body's elite, had had a grand ball in the rarefied atmosphere of his skull the night before, leaving a ghastly mess below in his system that his guts, those long-suffering peons, had had to clean up, and they weren't at all happy about it. His belly and bowels felt like a burning city and his headache was a blood-crazed mob. His eyeballs were firepits, his tongue felt and tasted like a hair shirt, and his skin felt like the bottom of an industrial sewer. Like the last remaining ragged royal refugees, his reeling conscious mind managed to get him into the bathroom before the beleaguered realm that was his body purged itself of the problem. _That_ felt like a visit from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with a special bonus appearance of the Fifth, that being Chaos, which left him collapsed on the cool decking feeling like a smoking crater. Oh, God, even the hangover he'd gotten after that bottle of Uncle Diego's moonshine hadn't been this bad.

A hot shower and a long, cold drink of water helped somewhat, but he was still feeling a bit green when he staggered out of his room toward the kitchen, his mind on a nice tall glass of iced hantic tea. That stuff was good for all sorts of minor stomach problems and great for flushing toxins out of the system, and he felt like he had plenty of those still rattling around in there. Once again, he was very grateful for his adopted aunt and the mystical, magical realm of the envirodeck that grew such miraculous herbs.

On his way to the kitchen, he passed Tilla, who sniffed at him and grunted in disgust.

He reached up and patted her nose with a muttered, “Yeah, I know. Think I smell bad? Try it yourself sometime.”

Did dragons get hangovers, he wondered, and glanced at her teeth. Nope, probably not. Obligate carnivores didn't do much heavy drinking. He managed to make it to the kitchen without further incident and made himself that coveted tall glass of iced tea, plus one slice of toast. If the tea could bring him to the point where he could look at that toast without being revolted by the whole idea of food, then he might just survive this.

He was just starting to nibble his toast when the memories of his exploits the previous night began to resurface, and he couldn't help but whimper a bit. The brandy had been nice, it had warmed and relaxed him, and whatever had been in that blue bottle had certainly enhanced that—he hadn't had any inhibitions left _at all._ Holy crow, had he really...

Somebody slid into the chair next to him. He didn't dare look around.

“So,” that person said conversationally, “a fuzzy mousie suit? _Whipped cream?”_

“With vanilla in it,” Lance said with a whiff of his old defiance. “The real stuff, not the synthetic. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to take a pod and go and launch myself into the nearest star.”

Someone else sat down on his other side. “Nah, don't do that, you still owe me a teddy-bear suit. I am going to have to put my foot down about one thing, though.”

Lance winced and slumped down onto the table, face buried in his arms. “Yes?”

“No less than sixteen ounces of dark chocolate ganache, real Earth-chocolate, too, or the date's off. I have standards, man.”

Lance heaved a huge sigh and tried to remember which star was the closest right now. “Sure, sure, only the best for you, Hunk. You can help me make the mocha syrup for Shiro, too. Has Keith finished sharpening the knife that he's gonna use to skin me?”

Hunk patted his back. “Nah. That'll take all week. Nasty keeps trying to steal it, too, 'cause it's luxite alloy, and that's really rare.”

Lance grunted. “How 'bout Allura? She's got a whip--”

“Which is strictly for fighting the enemy,” someone said, pulling a chair away from the table and sitting down across from him. Lance did not look up. “Hunk, what exactly is 'whipped cream,' and do Humans often mix food with amorous activities?”

Lance had known Hunk since they had both been very small, and was well aware that Hunk knew just as much and probably more than he did about how inextricably romance was linked to cooking back on Earth, from the delicate play of chocolates and fine wines to the unlikely and unwise uses to which certain vegetables—cucumbers and eggplant were two of the most common examples—were often put to by lonely individuals. He had no doubt that Hunk would cheerfully spend the rest of the morning explaining at least some of that to the Princess if he didn't head it off, and decided to man up before the worst happened. As Uncle Diego had said, once Lance had gotten over the worst of the aftereffects from that long-ago bottle of moonshine, one had to accept the embarrassments that life handed one, and to own them and learn from them, lest one be thought an honorless fool. (Those weren't the exact words that Uncle Diego had used, of course; the man had an extremely broad vocabulary where it had come to the vernacular, and hadn't been too pleased about Lance's accidental theft of a bottle of his best homebrew. Aunt Lucia had overheard him on the way to the laundry room and had used her _chancla_ to correct his conduct.)

“Yes,” Lance said before Hunk could speak, lifting his head up enough to shoot her a narrow look over the backs of his hands. “Yes, we do. And we like it. Helenva said that you still had that soluna silk bodysuit, and I'm going to want to have a look at it. If you're in it at the time, then that's even better. Or get Shiro to put it on. I wasn't kidding about that.”

“Put what on?” Shiro asked, coming into the room.

Lance groaned. It was being one of _those_ mornings.

Hunk grinned. “Allura's stretchy silk suit, like Lance here mentioned last night.”

Shiro leaned against the wall with thoughtful look, and then nodded. “Sure.”

Everyone stared at him. “Seriously?” Lance squeaked.

Shiro gave him a slow smile. “Relax, I'm teasing. We don't really have time for all of that. Besides...”

“Yeah?” Lance said warily.

Shiro came over and tapped his head with a finger. “I don't like mocha. I'll trade Keith my mocha for the brandy sauce.”

Lance glared at him suspiciously for a long moment, unable to tell whether or not Shiro was messing with him again. “You are a bad person.”

Shiro patted his head. “And you need to work on your situational awareness. Repeat after me, Lance: 'when pirates hand me a bottle of unfamiliar homebrew, I will thank them and pass it on.'”

Lance repeated that very useful piece of advice, and gave him a hard look as he headed into the kitchen for a snack. He sighed and pushed himself upright, retrieving his toast before Hunk could grab it and taking a bite. “I don't understand it,” he muttered sourly. “I mean, I know that I'm attracted to you, Allura--”

“That was obvious from the beginning,” she cut in archly.

Lance ignored that. “--But the rest of you guys... I mean, where did that come from? Hunk's easy, right, you're all about the hugs--”

“Yup,” Hunk interjected, “and chocolate.”

“--but everyone else? Even... ugh... Keith? Wait, yeah, Keith, especially when we do magic together, you all can feel that...” Lance rubbed at his face in confusion. “Half of my family would freak. What's going on here? Are you guys getting the same feelings?”

Before anyone could answer, Coran popped his head into the dining room; behind him and looking rather amused were Keith and Lizenne. “I should hope so!” Coran said firmly. “It's the Lion-bond, of course, and it wasn't in the least uncommon for the previous Paladins to become thoroughly involved with one another. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes in trios, mostly all together in a big polychromatic cuddle pile. Zarkon had some trouble with the idea—Galra being strictly monogamous and him being a bit of a prude—and Alfor was thoroughly in love with his wife well before he became the red Paladin. Still, that's why Allura here is an only child. There's no stronger bond than love, you see, and the Lions need the strongest bonds possible among their pilots. Best indicator of a good team is a bit of romance. Your declarations of affection last night were typical, Lance.”

“Not where we come from,” Keith muttered.

Coran waved a hand dismissively. “Doesn't matter. At least this time most of you are from the same planet, and more or less the same shape as we are! Most of the other teams were completely different, and the mix of physical and cultural hangups required a great deal of effort to overcome. And special equipment, for some of 'em. Why, my father used to tell me tales of the third team, where the black Paladin fell madly in love with the green one; not only were they of completely incompatible genders—the green one was female and the black one was gloxoid—but they were deathly allergic to each other's feathers and secretions. That and the green one had come from the deep tundra of Pretharg Seven, while her lover was from the volcanic badlands of Twilk, and neither of them were physically--”

“Coran,” Allura said warningly.

“--Tab A didn't fit into Slot B, to put it mildly,” Coran said irrepressibly, but stopped with a surprised squeak when Lizenne tweaked his ear.

“I thought you said that Zarkon tried making a move on the green Paladin,” Keith said suspiciously.

Coran nodded, rubbing at his ear and giving Lizenne an admonishing look, which she returned with interest. “He did. Trigel hit him with a table, and after that, he kept his hands to himself. Just as well, really. Haggar didn't like sharing even then. They settled for being really good friends, which worked very well... up to the point where it didn't, anyway.”

Pidge snapped her fingers. “That's why it all fell apart in the end, didn't it? Zarkon was really strong, but he didn't connect too well with the others. They couldn't control his rage, or stop it from affecting them through the Lions. And if he and Haggar had been messing around with Quintessence even back then...”

“You may be right,” Allura said, looking worried.

Lance smirked. “Then maybe getting a little closer is a good thing, isn't it? Seriously, though, I am going to want to have a look at that silk bodysuit of yours, just to help things along. Just think of it, guys—Shiro, in one of those bodysuits.”

They thought about it, and very much to their surprise, began to salivate. Keith, mildly horrified at himself, gulped and shook his head violently. “No. Absolutely not.”

Lance waved a dismissive hand. “Bushwa. How 'bout a genuine, disinterested third-party opinion? Hey, Lizenne, what do think of seeing Shiro in soluna silk formal wear?”

Lizenne craned her neck slightly to see through the kitchen doors. Shiro was piling a plate with snacks and had his back to her, and she carefully judged his improving physique. “Right now, or after he's toned himself up a little more?”

“Either way.”

She pursed her lips for a moment, considering the matter. “I'd say that even without a proper coat of purple fur, he'd be absolutely devastating.”

“Ha!” Lance said triumphantly, waggling a finger at the others. “See? See? It is a good idea, and I'm gonna follow up on it, so there. Where do you get soluna silk, anyway?”

She smiled. “The same place that the suits come from. The planet Xelocia, which buys its continued existence by supplying that silk to the Empire. It's harvested from a very large insect that refuses to be farmed, and the silk itself cannot be synthesized. It's rare and very expensive, and in order to get so much as one bolt of the fabric, we'd have to chase a large portion of Zarkon's space navy out of their orbits.”

Lance thumped a fist on the table. “Fine. It's a date. After we get done with our current gig, we'll go right over there.”

“Not just yet, dear, the Xelocia System's only about six or seven lightyears from Kedrek.” Lizenne smiled at his disappointed pout. “We've other things to do before we can go that far in, and one of them will happen today. Please come to the training deck when you've finished eating, everyone. Pidge, you and Keith need to see how well you can work together on removing aetheric shields, and it's high time that Shiro began his aetheric training. Just dodging Druids isn't enough anymore. I'll go and put the finishing touches on that gladiator-drone. Eat a big lunch, children, because that thing will be a challenge.”

Hunk rubbed at his chin and humphed. “Like those cyborgs outside Haggar's lab?”

“A little,” Lizenne gave him a sly smile. “Those things were nowhere near as agile as an Altean training drone. If it hits you, you are going to feel it, and in more ways than one. I'll leave it to you to figure out exactly what ways those are, Hunk, you being the Castle's genius mechanic. Shiro, I assume that you are listening in.”

There was a guilty sound from the man in the kitchen. “Um, yes?”

“You are not required to help them fight the gladiator, and will probably not be up to trying,” she lifted a warning eyebrow at him. “Soluk will be on hand to make sure that you do not overstress yourself. Be warned.”

She turned and left, leaving the others looking worried. Lance gulped. “Hunk, have you ever gotten around to studying those things?”

“Nope,” Hunk replied. “There was always something better. Pidge? Allura?”

Pidge shook her head, although Allura nodded. “A little, but that was a long time ago, during my own early training. I was trying to find a way to make them a little less agile, but I never managed it. Ancients only know how our resident witches have altered that machine.”

Keith shrugged. “Well, we'll just think of it as a Haggar-poisoned super-Sentry and do it on the fly. I figure that we can handle it. It's not a Robeast, after all. Any ideas, Coran?”

“Not in particular,” Coran admitted. “Aetheric-enhanced cybernetics isn't really my area of specialty. Alfor and I did occasionally knock into the odd magically-boosted robot while we were out fighting evil, and they generally weren't too difficult to deal with. We usually just had to aim for the big crystal eye, or confront the thing with some sort of mystic device, or drop it down a hole or something. Gyrgan stopped one by pouring a bottle of carbonated fruit juice into its vents, causing it to explode very satisfactorily. If worse came to worse, we'd ask Zarkon to get Haggar's help. She was quite good with that sort of thing. Unfortunately, it's been ten thousand years, during which time she has gotten better at it, and has been using that knowledge in ways that she really shouldn't.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Tell us about it. We had to squeeze a canful of Shiro-juice out of one of them.”

“Which is something that I may never be able to repay you for,” Shiro said, coming back into the dining room with a plate full of assorted goodies. “At least, I hope that I'll never have to return the favor. You'll be able to handle it, whatever she's done to the gladiator. I'm more worried about the magic lessons, myself.”

The others reflected on the lessons they'd learned since Shiro's disappearance, and the side effects of those lessons. “I don't think that you'll have too much trouble,” Hunk said slowly. “Hey, if I can do it, so can you. You just eat everything on your plate, okay? Magic isn't hard on the inside, but when you come out of trance after a big project, it's like you haven't eaten in a week. It uses up a _lot_ of energy, chief. If you're going to be an Oracle like Lizenne said, you'll want to start packing lunches when it's your turn to pilot the black Lion. We all have lunchboxes stashed in them now, and we need them!”

Shiro gave his teammates a long look. While it was true that they had bulked up, it was all muscle; no one but Hunk was carrying more than an ounce of extra weight. He smiled. “Then how do you keep your manly physique?”

Hunk slapped his round belly proudly with both hands. “With constant effort and dedication to the cause. I need this for extra stamina, Shiro. Reshaping machinery takes work. Now eat your lunch before I do.”

 

“Modhri, the dragons, and I left the Castle too early,” Lizenne said a little time later on the training deck, once they'd gotten settled on the big floor cushions, “for all that it turned out to be absolutely necessary, I am still very sorry that we did. You did well enough to survive with the bits and pieces that I gave you; I did not know what fast learners you all turned out to be at that time. Frankly, my great-aunt would have smacked me bald-bottomed for missing the signs—any Matriarch would give her left _mathrit_ to have six potent witches in the family, particularly ones with such rare talents.”

“I think that we're pretty good at picking stuff up as we go along,” Lance said proudly. “We did okay on that search effort after you came back, and Pidge and Allura saved your hash when you all got kidnapped. And then--”

Lizenne waved a hand, cutting him off. “I don't dispute that. You five are remarkable, both with and without the help of the Lions. The problem remains that Shiro here has had none of that practice, and he has been afflicted with the one branch of the Art that is absolutely unique for each and every individual, and one that has been known to drive its practitioners to substance abuse, or to insanity. Sometimes both. I cannot teach him much about how to use it, but I can show you all how to keep him centered, and to give him a grounding in what he missed.”

“Which I'm going to need, if I'm going to keep up with them,” Shiro said with a self-depreciating smile. “I've been wondering... we've got a lot of old myths and legends about prophets being able to change the course of the future, just through sheer will. Is that possible?”

Lizenne chuckled and shared a wry look with Soluk, who chuffed in amusement. “Everyone does that. It's called 'making choices'. The future is, for the most part, incredibly malleable while at the same time being incredibly resilient. You can change little bits of it by doing something as simple as choosing which pair of socks you put on in the morning, but that decision is unlikely to change the fate of the universe itself. Those rare people who have good, clear visions of what is coming might have a bit more push, but it's hard to measure exactly how much. For now, we'll leave that part of it alone until we can get over to Omorog. Lights out.”

Darkness descended; Shiro's nerves prickled at the sudden lack of visibility, but he could feel the rest of his team nearby, and stared around with the instinctive urge to find his friends.

Somewhere in the dark, Lizenne spoke. “Relax. In this darkness, there is safety. Nothing here may hurt you, save for your own silliness. There is comfort here, and companionship, for you are of the Pack, and the Pack is as one. You know this.”

They did, Shiro knew, and it was remarkable how that knowledge had sunk straight down into the bone and blood.

“Shiro, in this darkness, you will begin to see. Not with your eyes—those are just another handicap from where we're sitting now. Focus on Keith. Not his image, but the sense of him. His scent, the way he moves, the way the atmosphere changes with his mood. Feel the heat of him, and see.”

Shiro closed his useless eyes and concentrated, focusing his mind on the young man he'd been so close to for so long. The texture of his hair. The fierce look in his eyes. The itchy defensiveness. The depth of his trust. There was a ruby glimmer in the darkness, and Shiro's breath hissed through his teeth when scarlet light bloomed like a rose before him, outlining the young man in fire. Between them stretched a line of bicolor light, blue-purple on Shiro's end and red on Keith's, and leading away was another ruby filament that was connected to a distant feline form. The Lion, he realized, watchful, but silent.

“Very good,” Lizenne said approvingly, “now try that with Pidge. She's very different, isn't she?”

She was. That impish sense of humor and snarky wit, the way she went wild with excitement when encountering new and fascinating branches of science, the way the air around her charged up when she was working on a problem. That puckish grin when she was ruining some enemy's day. Emerald light glimmered, and suddenly she was there, linked both to him and to Keith, and to her Lion.

Encouraged by these successes, he didn't wait for Lizenne's prompting but sought out Lance next, recalling the fantastic ego that barely covered a mass of insecurities, the clowning around that was both irritating and comforting at the same time, the tendency to defuse tense situations with inappropriate humor. Like magic— _exactly_ like magic, he was there, sharing the link and flowing with fluid sapphire light.

Making contact with Hunk was almost instinctive. He was right there, solid and dependable, his lighthearted nature seeming shallow at first glance, but it concealed a vast compassion and a deep courage. There was a permanence about him that was incredibly comforting, and it shone through the darkness like a summer sunrise.

Allura was harder. She was not Human, and he had not known her for very long before he'd left; there was also a faint tension in their shared bond to the black Lion. Nonetheless, the darkness behind his eyes bloomed a rosy pink when he sought out her dedication and determination, her strange resourcefulness, the elfin grace and delicacy that was a hallmark of her people. With that last manifestation, he felt something lock into place around him. His mind's eye registered it as a pentacle, with himself in the center. His heart recognized it as family.

“Well done,” Lizenne whispered from somewhere far away. “They will not lose you now. Now listen to each other's heartbeats. Don't do anything, just calm your minds and feel. There is no effort involved at all. Relax. Sit quiet. Know the strength of the bonds that support you, and know that there is no severing them. In this harmony, you are as one.”

It was easy. It was so easy just to sit there, bathed in rainbow light, accepted and protected by everyone around them. The Lions were there also, faint but present, unimaginable power awaiting in potentia. Shiro felt that power cycling through them all in an endless loop, far greater than the sum of its parts. He could have sat there forever, basking in the warmth of it, and was almost annoyed when Lizenne and Soluk sifted into visibility a little distance away. Hers was a sharp, bright, rich gold signature, the dragon glimmering with diamond light; Soluk scintillated as he pranced a few playful steps, and Lizenne's laughter was a shower of gems. _You make me proud, my kindred,_ she said, although not in words, _run with us now, and know the old freedoms of the hunting pack._

The darkness was suddenly awash with stars, threaded together with a shimmering golden network that Shiro had seen once before, long ago, in a very important dream, and he and his team leaped into a run together, following the lady and the dragon. Keith's aura flared with an instinctive joy that everyone now felt, a facet of the Galra blood that burned within him. The pack rejoiced; it was _right_ that they do this, and that they did this all together, as one, unstoppable. They ran lightfooted through the universe, planets and stars and asteroid fields all around, the great wheels of light that were other galaxies spinning like pinwheels in the distance, unimaginably far away and yet close enough to touch.

It was not long, however, before they caught a whiff of the enemy, a purple-black funk that made something inside Shiro's soul cringe in instinctive terror. Soluk hissed, and Lizenne cast the others a golden glance. _Armor and cloaks,_ she said, vanishing from view as her shadow swept about her like a cape made of night. _We do not want to attract any attention._

His armor. Shiro knew the weight of it, the strength of it, the fit of the helmet, the view through the visor, the feel of it when the boosters engaged. He was not surprised to feel it surround him now, not with the others suddenly in their own suits as well. As he watched, Keith muttered something soft under his breath and made a sweeping gesture with one arm. The blank patch of his shadow flowed upward like smoke to obscure him. _Your shadow's like a cloak of invisibility,_ Pidge said, swirling hers with a dramatic flourish. _Pull it up and make like a ninja, Shiro._

_Or like Batman,_ Hunk said, striking a pose very similar to one seen in the last major superhero vid to hit the big screens before they'd left Earth. _I like being Batman. Batman would totally kick Zarkon's butt._

_Are you kidding?_ Lance retorted, slinging his shadow around his shoulders like a heroic cape and striking an equally classic pose. _If Zarkon didn't squash him, Haggar would have had him for lunch. This is a job for Superman._

_All the geek points, guys,_ Keith grumbled.

_I can't take you anywhere, not even in the Mindscape,_ Allura sighed.  _Where is that stench coming from?_

_Druid,_ Soluk growled, star-washed darkness flowing over his diamond-bright scales as he concealed himself,  _more than one, and not far away. They're trying to shield themselves from view._

Shiro bared his teeth, somehow not surprised that he could understand the dragon perfectly out here. He bent and took hold of his shadow, which wound itself up his arm, flaring out to cover him and clinging to his body like sheer silk. Straightening up and shrugging it into place, he said, _You can put a wall around a trash heap, but that doesn't stop people from knowing that it's there._

Lizenne nodded. _We have the scent. Allura, where are we, exactly?_

Allura looked around at the constellations, shrugging her shadow closer around herself. _Not far from where we started. Only a few systems away from Halidex, actually. The Subrilo System, I think._

Shiro growled in distaste. _They shouldn't be here. Someone must have told them what the Ghost Fleet was up to._

_Ketzewan did say that he'd had a deserter,_ Allura pointed out, _possibly one that talked to the wrong person._

_That wouldn't surprise me,_ Pidge said sourly, _I've been on Ketzewan's ship and met his crew. He's got a lot of tough old artichokes aboard, but a few of those guys are as weedy as they come. What are we going to do about it?_

_We need to know what's going on,_ Shiro replied, scanning the starlanes for the source of the stink. _I really don't want them firing a hex like the one that knocked you guys flat for half a year at us._

Lizenne nodded. _Lead us, then. You are more sensitive to their signature than any of the rest of us are now, having been half-drowned in it for far too long. Follow it. We have far more options now than we used to._

Shiro shuddered, but she was right. The feel of the Druids' presence was like a rasp on his nerves, and their stink made it difficult to breathe. Shiro gritted his teeth and headed for the source of the problem, the others following close behind. The trail was thankfully short, but their quarry was elusive, and it wasn't until Pidge spotted something familiar to her that they found what they were looking for. It had been very cleverly hidden in the thickest part of a meteor swarm, and enspelled to resemble that chaos of loose rocks and ice. On this plane, however, certain things became very visible to those who knew what to look for.

_Ghamparva ship,_ Pidge told them, pointing out something that gleamed like a garnet among the tumbling stones. As they drew closer, they saw a large, streamlined object sheathed in purple light.  _See the core in the center? Shussshorim had one of those locked up in her ship, and I used it as the power source for her cloaking system._

_Wow,_ Hunk said, eyeing the craft.  _That's a pretty good core, too, but how did she get it out of its ship? You would have to peel the whole frame like a banana to... oh._

_Yeah. There's a reason why the Military freaks out whenever she shows up, guys._ Pidge glared at the sleek, purple-streaked black ship.  _Looks like a long-range scout._

_Those can carry small teams,_ Lizenne informed them.  _Usually a pilot, a copilot, and two passengers, three if they don't mind a bit of crowding. I sense three Druids and one very unhappy pilot, people. What else can you detect?_

Allura shifted nervously. _Three very strong Druids. They've fed recently. So much power!_

_Yeah, and they got some of it from the copilot,_ Lance said in a sick voice. _They killed him, and I can still feel it!_

_That's why his partner's so upset,_ Hunk added. _I would be, too. The ship doesn't like having them aboard either, feel that? It's a good ship, nice powerful AI, really nicely designed and engineered, but it's just looking for an excuse to have a failure and blame it on those three._

_You're right,_ Pidge said thoughtfully, _it's not in Jasca's or Clarence's class, but it's pretty smart. You know, Keith, if we can get the shielding off and shut down the engines, then maybe if I tweaked the logic circuitry a little..._

Keith laughed. _Then you'd be Kolivan's favorite person for a while. He told me that Ghamparva AI's are programmed to wipe and crash instantly if someone tries to hack them. It's really,_ really _rare for the Blade to get their hands on intact files. Some of their tech guys are this close to worshiping you, you know. I think I can see how to do it, too. There's this one little part of the shield that's... I don't know how to describe it to you. Like the fuse on a firecracker?_

_Which part?_ Pidge asked.

Keith pointed at a small spot on the bow that the others couldn't even see. Pidge could, and examined it closely. _That's it! That's the spot that I'd ram the Spike of Hantis into. Are other hexes like this?_

Keith shrugged. _All I've ever seen are Mom's and Lizenne's and the ones that Kelezar had, plus the ones on the cyborgs and the door of Haggar's cold storage. I kind of nuked that last one, but they've all had that fuse in them._

Pidge cackled. _That's got some big possibilities. Can you see anything, Shiro?_

Shiro hesitated, not at all sure of what he could do, if anything. He stared up at the quiescent craft, focusing on the crew quarters, looking for anything that might help to confound the creatures and whatever they might be planning. He remembered that odd sensation back on the _Quandary,_ when the vision of that probable future had popped open in his mind like a flower bud. Was it possible to--

A sudden wave of dizziness swept through him, and a few brief images flashed across his mind. Three dark figures standing facing each other, a sphere of purple-black energies hovering between them. A streak of sheer malice flashing across the stars. A great ship laid open, spilling its crew and cargo into space.

Shiro gasped and shuddered, hearing the others yelp in surprise around him.

_Wow, what was_ that? Lance said.

_Guys, I think that the Abyss just blinked at us,_ Hunk said worriedly,  _that felt seriously weird, guys. What happened?_

_Like the whole universe twisted just a little, and sprang back like a rubber band,_ Pidge said thoughtfully.

Allura hummed.  _Whatever it was, it came from within our bond. Did you just have a Vision, Shiro?_

He nodded, rubbing at his head. _Yeah. Just a little one. Those Druids are going to be casting a spell of some sort. Don't know what, but it's bad. They're going to wreck the_ Quandary.

_They are_ tlarching  _not,_ Pidge snarled.  _I am going to--_

_Not here,_ Soluk barked authoritatively,  _not now. Act now and their mistress will know. Wait, and use their weapon against them._

Lizenne nodded. _Also, dear, do remember the last time that we ran into those things on this side of reality, and how much difficulty we had with them. We had Tilla and a whole cadre of Blades with us then; we do not have them with us now, and I will not risk any of you for the sake of pique, young lady. We are forewarned, and that will have to be enough. Come away, now._

Slowly, reluctantly, they turned to follow Lizenne and Soluk back to the Castle. Shiro glanced back at the lurking ship and scowled. _Is there a reason why Druids are more difficult to deal with in the Mindscape?_

_Oh, yes,_ Lizenne replied grimly, _according to the Histories, witch-talent used to be a great deal more common in the universe before Zarkon took the Throne. Mostly minor ones, but some of them were strong enough to unravel Haggar like a cheap sweater. In order to neutralize that threat, she needed strong, dependable, and above all,_ controllable _mages to back her up. Most aetheric practitioners prefer to use aetheric weapons, and so the Druids were designed to be more deadly on this plane than on the physical one. Generally, throwing lightning bolts and hexes around is sufficient for dealing with beings of the flesh._

_And the Lions are both magical and physical..._ Shiro mused.

She grinned at him. _I expect that the original team of Paladins came as a shock. Ah, here we are. Pay attention now, Shiro; ending a mind trip like this is simple. Picture your physical self as you last experienced it, sitting in the training deck with the others. Think of a word or a phrase that will both focus your will and get your body's attention. “Home” will do, although I believe that Hunk's word is “bacon”._

Shiro couldn't help but laugh at that, and Hunk confirmed it with a nod and a broad smile. _Makes sense. What's yours?_

She smiled sweetly. _“Modhri is there”. Go ahead, give it a try. Those floor cushions are nice, but they're a bit awkward, aren't they?_

It was that simple. Ever since he'd come out of the cloning tank, he'd paid special attention to everything that his right hand felt, simply because he was capable of non-mechanical sensation in that hand again. Everything from the stiff, sparse stubble that sprouted on his chin every morning to the soft fabric of his trousers registered acutely now. So did the floor cushions, which had not weathered their ten-thousand-year storage as well as they might have, and the filling had compacted just enough to make getting comfortable difficult. Getting his legs folded right, his rump placed properly, back straight so it didn't start to ache... _Home,_ he whispered, and the golden roads of _Tahe Moq_ vanished. He felt his own body around him again, smelled his own sweat, heard the soft, subliminal thrum of the Castle's systems, and... yup, he was back. His butt ached. He was also tired, thirsty, and very hungry all of a sudden.

“Lights on,” Modhri's voice came from somewhere nearby, and Shiro was suddenly very grateful to see the huge platter of snacks and the pitcher of fruit juice that the wonderful man had brought with him.

“Modhri, as soon as I can walk straight, I'm going to write to the Vatican and see if I can get you sainted,” Lance said, looking no less famished than Shiro felt.

“Get in line,” Pidge said with a grateful smile. “How'd you know?”

Modhri waved a hand at the ceiling and set the platter down between them, handing out glasses and pouring drinks. “Zaianne told me what was on the schedule for today. Lizenne often forgets to make provision for minor magical jaunts, so I remember for her.”

Lizenne reached up with a long arm, caught Modhri's ear, and pulled his face down to where she could kiss it. “And I am fully grateful for your foresight and kindness. We'll need to talk to Zaianne, Coran, and everybody who will be participating in our attack on Bericonde; Haggar's sent a trio of Druids out here as a secret weapon of sorts, and I have it on the best authority that they will make an attempt on the Admiral and his ship.”

Modhri's eyebrows rose, and he glanced at Shiro. “Not the Lions?”

Shiro shrugged. “I saw them cutting the _Quandary_ nearly in half. No idea why. They're in a Ghamparva ship, and one that's good at not being seen.”

Pidge growled. “I have their scent, and they will die. Osric is _mine. Nobody_ messes with my family, and nobody breaks my stuff!”

Modhri chuckled and passed her another tanrook bun. “I'm sure that Yantilee and the others appreciate that. I'll go and warn Coran and Zaianne for you, and they'll pass the word along. If nothing else, they'll certainly tell the _Night Terror._ She'll be all too happy to act as a spotter for you. Why, the opportunity to take three Druid pelts, or the robes, at least, will be too much for that monster to resist.”

Keith smiled. “Fighting monsters with monsters. I can get behind that.”

Lizenne smirked evilly. “As can I. Even Haggar prefers to avoid the _Night Terror_ and her sons. Thank you, Modhri. All right, Paladins, we'll take a few minutes to let our bellies settle, and then you can play with the gladiator. It'll give you something to experiment on, and will give you an excuse to stretch your legs a bit.” She unfolded her long legs to their fullest extent and wiggled her toes with a grunt of discomfort. “Lance, you might think about sewing us up some new cushions if we're going to be doing this sort of thing more often.”

Lance licked sauce off of his fingers and punched his cushion a few times with a considering expression. “Yeah, these feel like my mattress back in Galaxy Garrison's barracks did. I think that I can get the auto-weaver to produce cushion foam, and maybe Marco can embroider them with little Lions.”

“Or mice, perhaps,” Allura giggled. “I like mice.”

“I'll get right on it after we're done with the robot.” Lance heaved a long breath. “I don't wanna deal with the robot. Do we have to deal with the robot?”

Lizenne snorted. “Would you rather deal with Pidge, should those Druids damage the _Quandary?”_

Lance glanced at Pidge, who gave him her very best double-barreled stinkeye. He gulped. “I'll deal with the robot.”

Shiro wasn't in any shape to join them in that fight, rather to his annoyance, and had to be content with sitting and watching with Lizenne and Soluk while the augmented gladiator drone chased his teammates around the deck. Outwardly, there was nothing different about it, aside from it being set to a higher level than usual, but it fairly glowed with dire energies to his stranger senses. Their two resident Galra witches had not held back when layering the thing with hexes, and when he closed his eyes and opened his perceptions, it blazed like a fireworks display. To his relief, those hexes were nothing like Haggar's or a Druid's; there was no evil in them. This was a teaching tool, and one that some of the faculty back at Galaxy Garrison would have given someone's left arm for.

It certainly gave him an excellent opportunity to watch his team in action. They had improved considerably over the intervening year, and were well up to the challenge. Keith and Pidge in particular seemed to dance as they dodged and attacked, Lance was very nearly Allura's equal in agility now, and even Hunk moved with precision and grace. It spoke well for Zaianne's ability as a teacher, and he looked forward to working with her.

As he watched, the gladiator brought its staff around in a hissing arc that cracked against Allura's hip, and she collapsed with a shocked cry; Shiro couldn't blame her—he'd seen the flash of magic at the impact. “What spell was that?” he asked Lizenne.

“Paralysis,” Lizenne replied, nodding as Lance darted over to help her while the others drew the enemy away. “It shuts down the motor function in the nerves. She won't be able to use the leg until... ah. He's improving. Did you see that? Lance went right for the compromised nerve bundle.”

Allura muttered something that made a big, slightly foolish smile spread over Lance's face, and leaped up to rejoin her companions. Soluk grunted in satisfaction at her eagerness to fight, and Shiro smiled. “They've grown so much.”

“Oh, yes,” Lizenne sighed, and cocked him an amused glance. “You'll have your turn soon enough. Oops, oh dear. Poor Hunk!”

Hunk had caught a backhanded blow across the chest, and now he was scrabbling frantically at his armor and yelling for help. “What was that one?” Shiro asked.

“An old prank that Zaianne used to pull on her brothers when they were children, to teach them not to annoy her. It gives the sensation of being infested with a swarm of crawly, itchy, biting insects.” Lizenne rubbed at an arm in sympathy as Keith darted over to burn that spell away. “Surprisingly effective, as you can see.”

The robot's staff banged against the floor three times, attempting to crush Hunk and Keith, who scrambled frantically away. Chasing after the robot, Pidge stepped on one of the spots where the staff had impacted and toppled over with a startled squeak, the left leg jerking in uncontrollable spasms.

“Restless leg syndrome?” Shiro asked.

“A little more intense than that, but yes,” Lizenne replied, “which will teach her to watch her step. Tilla and Soluk taught me that in much the same way.”

Shiro glanced up at the dragon, who winked three large blue eyes at him and rumbled humorously. A sizzle and a yell jerked his attention back to the battle; the robot's staff was now crackling with golden energy, and Lance had caught it right across the rump. Shiro recognized it as being much the same as the lightning bolts that had been fired at him during his own early training. “What else did you two load that thing with?”

“Well, let's see,” Lizenne said, ticking the hexes off on her fingers. “There's the slippery-foot spell...”

Keith blocked another strike and then yelled in surprise as his boots lost traction, sending him whizzing out of control across the room.

“The stickiness spell...”

There was another clang and a squeal as Allura stumbled against Hunk and found herself unable to get loose.

“The sleeping spell...”

Hunk, very much encumbered with a loudly-protesting Altean, was unable to dodge and wound up in a snoring heap on the floor.

“The clumsiness spell...”

There was another clang, and Lance abruptly lost all of the grace he'd acquired, and then some.

“The super-speed spell...”

There was a high-pitched yowl as Pidge began to bounce around the room like a ball around a pinball board, completely unable to stop.

“To say nothing of the forgetfulness spell, the confusion spell, the blindness spell, the turning-funny-colors spell, the stinky spell, the slow-down spell, and the howling spell, all of which are tucked behind at least five layers of shielding.” Lizenne shrugged. “We agreed that such little-girl's hexes might be a nice change from your basic Druid's death spells. It'll certainly teach them caution.”

Shiro gave her a mildly horrified look. “Galra boys must live in terror of their sisters.”

Lizenne nodded. “Until they learn not to irritate the girls, or at least learn to curry their favor, yes.”

Shiro considered that in light of all of the Galra he'd encountered during his career as a space hero. “That... that explains so much.”

Lizenne flicked him an amused look and turned her attention back to the floor show. It ended only a few minutes later when Lance, who had little control over his chaotic movements, led the gladiator past Allura, who was still stuck to Hunk. She reached out and grabbed the drone by the ankle; caught by the stickiness spell, it couldn't pull loose, and she shouted urgently at Keith. Keith, who had fetched up against the far wall, judged his timing and angle carefully, and pushed himself toward them as hard as he could, picking up extra speed when Pidge slammed into his back. Both of them collided heavily with the gladiator, which fell over Hunk, flat on its face on the floor. Within seconds, the shields and hexes had been removed from the robot and teammates alike, and Pidge was exacting her vengeance by jumping up and down on the helpless foe.

“Not bad,” Shiro said.

Lizenne waggled a hand. “Pidge will have to teach Keith about working at a distance—at the moment, he actually has to touch the enspelled thing to get rid of the hex, personally or through the Lions. If he'd been able to toss a spark, or tie it to her Spike of Hantis like a fire-arrow, that thing would have been down and out in seconds. She's been taking over ships at considerable distances ever since she discovered the trick. Eh, they'll work it out.”

Shiro nodded. “I'll mention it to them. At least they didn't have to sample all of the hexes personally, or Pidge wouldn't just be making it do the... is that the Arusian Dance of Apology?”

Lizenne frowned at the drone's peculiar gyrations. “You tell me. Ah. And that, I assume, is the 'Macarena'?”

“No, that's... Oh, god... Pidge, this is a no-twerking zone! Stop torturing the gladiator.”

Pidge stuck out her tongue at him. “Not until I'm sure that it's really sorry.”

“It might be, but I'm not,” Lizenne said, standing up and patting Soluk's nose. “We'll want to do this again, since it has revealed to me a weakness in your defenses. Those little spells might have been uncomfortable and embarrassing here; think of what might have happened to you if this were a real fight against a real enemy. For now, however, I will want you to discuss your tactics and find ways of avoiding or blocking such things in the future. Shiro has some observations to share that will be of use; there are some things that I need to do, so I will leave you all to it.”

“Like what?” Hunk asked.

“Like checking up on that yulpadi in the envirodeck,” she replied, making Soluk perk up and lick his chops. “We'll have to do something about that beast soon, or I'll have to leave it entirely to the dragons.”

“How come?” Keith asked, aghast at losing his chance for a big, hot, steaming bowl of the best stew in outer space. “Do they develop weird toxins or something?”

“No, but at a certain age and at a certain time of year, they start looking for mates,” Lizenne waggled a finger at them. “It makes them very aggressive, and a sex-crazed yulpadi is something to be avoided. I've known them to molest tamboks when they can't find proper partners. Very amusing to watch—you should see the look on those big fellows' faces—but I doubt that Tilla would appreciate the experience, even if it does allow Soluk to grab it without running himself ragged first.”

They stared at her, and then at the dragon, who was chuffing in amusement.

“Your planet is weird, pal,” Lance informed Soluk.

Soluk nodded cheerfully and licked his face.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are the stuff of dreams. The more we get, the more stuff we dream up. Thank you to everyone who contributes to our insane fantasies, which then get written down for everyone to enjoy! Or suffer through, if twerking comes up in conversation...


	22. Afterlife Lessons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *chips tiny hole in glacier that was once my neighborhood and slips this chapter through* Take it. Take it and save yourselves...

Chapter 22: Afterlife Lessons

 

A few days later, Zaianne was once again standing on the pilot's dais while Coran manned the console, the screens showing a stunning view of the Bericonde System. She could clearly see the purple glints of the Galra patrol fleets and the ships at dock in the assembly yard, and the many civilian trading craft that came and went almost constantly. Planets gleamed like jewels in the light of the triple suns, and for the moment, just this tiny space of time, she gave herself leave to admire the beauty of her surroundings.

It would all be in chaos very soon; the Ghost Fleet was in position now, as were its allies, and hidden in the outer asteroid belts were two unique craft. Jasca, who in a few minutes would jam the System's communications so completely that it wouldn't even show up on the starcharts. Clarence, whose unique spacedrive would drop him, his armaments, and the squadron of small fighting craft he carried smack into the middle of things. The Humans had a word for it— _blitzkrieg,_ or “lightning war”, and the Imperial forces stationed here would feel the shock of it. Even Lotor, should he show himself, would have his hands full. Even the _Night Terror_ was here, somewhere, the lure of taking down three Druids having been sufficient to coax her into staying close. As much as that old monster hated Galra in general, she hated Haggar and Haggar's hench-mages even more.

A nervous movement off to her left distracted her; Shiro was standing there, running the fingers of one hand through his freshly close-cropped hair, his expression tense, and yes, yearning. She felt a moment's pride for her adoptive son, so eager to leap back into the fray, even after the amount of damage that he'd taken. She saw the muscles rippling in his shoulders and neck when the Lions flew past in formation, his fists clenching with the desire to fly again. She whispered the calming cantrip under her breath, and smiled when he sighed. “Soon,” she murmured soothingly.

“I know,” he replied.

“Take this as a research project,” she suggested, adjusting the ship's angle slightly to keep the Lions within view. “Your team has matured more than a little, and Allura is a decent leader. Study them, and know how best to handle them when it's your turn to lead.”

He nodded. “Am I allowed to backseat-drive?”

She chuckled. “If you see something that they should know about, feel free to alert them. That goes for the rest of the Fleet as well, of course. From what my son has told me, you've a good eye. Use it; every bit of help that you can give them will increase our chances of success. Has Lizenne given you some solo lessons yet?”

Shiro grunted. “No, but Keith and the others have been helping. We've been doing group exercises for the past several days—they say that we'll do a full circle-session later, like the one that helped them find me. They were interesting, but they gave me some weird dreams.”

Zaianne nodded. “That's not uncommon. Precognition is among the slipperiest of the aetheric Arts. Scenes of battle, I assume?”

“Yeah, but... they were sort of vague, and all jumbled up.” Shiro shrugged. “I saw us win. I saw us lose. A huge battlefleet showed up some of the time. The Castle was destroyed by the enemy. The Castle destroyed the enemy. The _Chimera_ did the same. I saw planets destroyed... or not. Nothing was clear, except that it was going to be a big fight.”

“Sounds about right, yeah,” Coran mused. “No matter how you plan it, a battle this size is always a bit uncertain. Your chances are never greater than fifty-fifty. I've seen huge fleets crushing smaller ones, make no mistake, but I've also seen huge fleets being smashed up by a handful or two of really surprising ships. Lucky for us, we've got a whole bunch of really surprising ships. Isn't that so, Clarence?”

“ _Got that right, Coran,”_ a slightly tinny tenor came cheerfully through the comms. _“I came as a surprise to myself, to say nothing of everybody else! All right, Jasca says that everybody's in position out here, and she can pop the local comm-sats like bubbles whenever you're ready to start.”_

Coran smiled. “Excellent. Paladins, are you ready?”

“ _We are, Coran,”_ Allura replied firmly.

“ _As are we,”_ Yantilee's peculiarly androgynous voice confirmed. _“On my mark, Jasca.... MARK!”_

In response to that shout, a signal of remarkable power rang throughout the entire communications network, audible on the Castle's bridge as a long singing cry of sheer defiance, and the Castle's screens fuzzed slightly until Coran adjusted his instruments to Jasca's private network. Little explosions bloomed like flowers all around the planets as the local comm-sats blew their relays under the force of it, and at a command from Allura, the Lions leaped forward to handle their end of the mission.

Shiro watched the unfolding battle with wide eyes and breath hissing between his teeth; over _there_ , a group of Yantilee's privateers were tearing through a Galra battlefleet with deadly professionalism, and _there_ the _Osric's Quandary_ had fired on a starport. Ships flashed in and out of sight, having been augmented with Pidge's invisibility system, and he started and stared as a fleet of Galra destroyers dissolved into panicked disarray when a great glossy black ship appeared out of nowhere and tore into them with bright beams. Also out of nowhere came a great pale hulk of a mobile fort that spewed cannon fire and fighter squadrons in equal profusion, there one moment and gone the next, reappearing a few seconds later in a completely different area. A polychrome glare made his eyes water; Voltron had formed, and he watched in awe as the mighty battle robot sliced an errant destroyer in half and headed off to disable an orbital shipyard. The Galra fleets struggled to respond to the sudden, massive, seemingly uncoordinated attacks; they were all too used to orderly militaries; the Ghost Fleet was anything but. Very few of the Fleet Captains had been military men. These were people who had come up in rank and held onto life and ships the hard way, through trial and error, fortune and misfortune, and who knew all of the dirtiest tricks and fanciest flying. They had also been loners for most of their careers, and often in competition with each other, and very nearly no two ships were alike. Shiro had no idea of how Yantilee was coordinating this incredibly motley crowd, but it was working. It was certainly working on the Galra, and his own vision began to blur a little, trying to keep track of the movements of so many ships.

Shiro blinked and shook his head to clear it, then concentrated on his team. They were doing well, he thought, far better than he'd seen before, and the sharp, concise commands that Allura was giving were acted upon immediately. They directed the great battle robot with flair and grace, Shiro saw, and wished that Commander Iverson were here to see them at work. Voltron left the shipyard largely intact, although the ships in its docks had been smashed, and went to help some of their friends. A light cruiser had managed to separate one of the Fleet ships out of position and was showering it with heavy fire. Voltron boosted in under its bow, vanishing into its shadow; Shiro felt an odd mixture of sensations in the back of his mind—a surge, a clack of flint against steel, and the jab of a thorn. The light cruiser was briefly engulfed in a sheet of golden-scarlet flame that spat tiny green glints at the edges, and then the ship's lights turned blue. Its engines went dead a moment later with a dusting of snowflakes and a whiff of hot metal, and whoops of triumph rang over the comms. The team had stolen a ship for the Alliance.

Shiro grinned in response to that; he'd had the privilege of watching Pidge and Keith work together on the training deck, practicing with a gladiator that had been freshly reloaded with a cargo of spells and shields. It had taken them a few tries to get the timing right, but they'd figured it out, and had now achieved something much greater.

“Were they able to get Keith's talent to work at a distance?” Zaianne asked.

Shiro shook his head. “Not yet. He's got the shape of the idea, but he can't quite manage it if he isn't in the Lion. Pidge is just a few steps ahead of the rest of us, as usual.”

“I'd be worried if she wasn't,” Coran commented, “that's geniuses for you. Oops— _Trinary,_ watch your back! There's a destroyer attempting to sneak up on you!”

“ _We see it, Coran,”_ Captain Dablinnit's gruff voice barked, _“well spotted. Punch the thrusters, men, let's see if they're foolish enough to follow us past the_ Terror--”

A sudden certainty struck Shiro firmly behind the eyes. “Don't bother the  _Terror,_ Dablinnit, she's busy. Lead him past Ketzewan.”

“ _What?”_ Coran and Dablinnit said in unison.

“Just do it,” Shiro said, “and hurry. You've got fifteen seconds.”

Dablinnit muttered something about wild guesses, but did as he was told. The sleek prow of the  _Trinary_ dipped and its thrusters flared as it boosted hard in  _The Pride of Calynx's_ direction. The destroyer followed, firing bolt after bolt of searing ions, too intent on its prey to notice the danger until too late. Tepechwa's small but powerful battleship, a converted asteroid miner that he had named the  _Skep-Thanka,_ powered through an asteroid field and blew out its drive section. Whoops and howls of triumph were heard from Dablinnit's and Tepechwa's ships, and Shiro permitted himself a relieved smile. It had worked.

“Good guess, Shiro,” Coran said, nodding approvingly at him.

“It wasn't a guess,” Shiro confessed. “I just... knew.”

“Keep on knowing, then, and we may get out of this intact,” Zaianne said sharply. “Eyes front, Coran. Is that another enemy squadron trying to use that moon for cover, and more importantly, where are those Druids?”

Where were those Druids? That was the burning question that refused to be answered. Shiro's eyes darted over the screens seeking them, but they had yet to make their move. Offhandedly, he wondered if that Ghamparva ship's pilot was still alive, or if Haggar's creatures had devoured his Quintessence, too. There was no answering that at the moment, so he had to settle for passing on his hunches whenever they occurred, keeping one eye on Voltron and the other on the  _Quandary_ as he did so. Those, at least, were easy to see. The  _Quandary_ was easily the largest true ship in the system right now, Clarence being only slightly larger; its massive gun emplacements firing broadsides that even the greatest enemy craft had a hard time matching, and Shiro could see why Zarkon would have wanted the Sikkhorans and their Grand Freighters out of the picture. The sheer firepower impressed even Pidge, for her voice rang over the comm net:  _“Holy cow, Yantilee, did you guys upgrade while I wasn't looking?”_

Yantilee chuckled.  _“I've a few Olkari and Beronites among my engineering and gunnery crews at the moment. They made a few improvements. You're flying better as well.”_

“ _It's all in the wrist,”_ Lance said smugly, and then humphed. _“Look out guys, somebody managed to get a call for help out. I don't think it's Lotor, but it's a pretty big fleet.”_

Shiro jerked his eyes to the right and saw the approaching purple glints of the incoming enemy. So had Voan Lenna, who uttered a most un-wombatly roar of rage. _“I know that flagship!”_ the old fellow cried furiously. _“That is none other than the_ Khaz Alta, _commanded by none other than the dreaded General Gvorsh, who is responsible for the destruction of Essilveni II. No more shall lovers plight their troths in the glow-fern glades of that gentle world, and by Helukra, I'll have his_ hapleks _for that!”_

“ _Hold It Together, Old Friend,”_ Ketzewan trumpeted gallantly, _“That Name Is Known To My People As Well, And It Is Not A Popular One. Well Do I Know How Deeply The Refugees Of Cretha Colony Desire To See His Bones In A Compost Heap! Come Sir, Working Together, We Shall Surely Have Him.”_

“ _Hold off!”_ Yantilee boomed, startling both angry Captains into silence. _“Remember just_ how _that monster wins his battles. Let Varda and her team handle that egg-thief—Varda, that ship of his has a whole lot of non-regulation armaments that he likes to use when his foes least expect it. Rumor has it that he has some sort of pact with the experimental research labs back in the Core Worlds somewhere, and they use him to field-test their really nasty ideas.”_

“ _Mine,”_ Hunk declared, making Zaianne chuckle fondly. _“Guys, if he has something new, I want to see it. Hey, Voan Lenna, Ketzewan, would it hurt Gvorsh's feelings if we stole his ship?”_

“ _He would doubtless weep at its loss,”_ Voan Lenna replied. _“By all means, take it for the Cause.”_

Shiro suddenly went cold, and he glanced back and forth between Yantilee's ship and Voltron. He knew how fast the great battle robot was, and how much distance it could cover when it was in a hurry. Gvorsh and his fleet were still distant, and were not approaching anywhere near as fast as they should have been... “Wait! Not yet, team, not yet!”

“ _What's wrong, Shiro?”_ Keith asked.

“It's a ruse,” Shiro said, suddenly sure that every word he spoke was truth. “Gvorsh is trying to get you far enough away from the _Quandary_ for the Druids to strike without risking you guys catching the curse and throwing it back.”

“ _So, they're here already, are they?”_ Yantilee sounded annoyed, a very dangerous thing in an Elikonian. _“Jasca, Clarence, can you detect anything that shouldn't be here?”_

“ _What, like everybody?”_ Jasca shot back. _“I'm not sure what I'm looking for here, boss. If there's a Ghamparva scout out here, I can't see or hear it.”_

“ _Me neither, people,”_ Clarence added. _“If they're here, they're well-hidden.”_

Shiro thought hard. “When we first saw them, they had an aetheric shield up that made them look and sound like part of an asteroid field. I don't know... look for a patch of rocks that's shaped like a ship, maybe?”

“ _You may be on to something there,”_ Jasca said, humming thoughtfully as she ran her scanners over the System. _“Clarence, you'd be better at spotting bad magic than me.”_

“ _Find it fast!”_ Tchak's voice cut in suddenly. _“Gvorsh's fleet just changed their vector, and are heading straight at Zorjesca and me. We can't handle that kind of crowding over here!”_

“ _Working...”_ Clarence hummed in a fierce monotone. _“It's... oh hey, thanks, Zerod. Hunk, my resident ghost says that it's right over there. Sending the coordinates—hey!”_

Everybody flinched in sudden instinctive fear as a terrible, triumphant shriek tore across Jasca's comm net; when she had burst the local communications satellites, the ancient AI had supplied a private net for the Fleet ships. This made communications possible for the Ghost Fleet, but it also meant that any of those Fleet ships could hear any of the others. That included the _Night Terror,_ who had intercepted those coordinates and was now heading toward the hidden Ghamparva ship with her engines at full burn.

Druids could not feel fear, nor did they panic. They were capable of anger, but not rage, and were cold-minded killers unlike any other. They could also disregard their own chances of survival to complete a mission. They were, however, quite capable of recognizing the Hoshinthra Warleader for exactly what she was, which was far more than the physical eyes could see. They also knew exactly what would happen to them if the Talssenemai's sons got their claws on them.

In addition, their pilot, already badly upset by the loss of his partner, was an entirely unmagical, completely physical fellow, and he was very aware of just why his Order had to be on high alert for a very specific hazard in the Bamnapos, Minari, and Ausa Sectors. As eagerly as the _Night Terror_ attacked any unwary Galra ship, she was particularly attracted to Ghamparva. The pilot had a very healthy dread of being skinned alive and eaten by that monster, and had no intention whatsoever of fighting her. _And here she came..._

Nobody saw the Ghamparva ship. What everybody did see and exclaim over in the following weeks was the sharp garnet flare of light and the great jagged black-and-purple lightning bolt that followed it, a System-spanning slash of sheer aetheric malice that slammed into the _Night Terror_ hard enough to peel a long slice of hullplate off like a fruit rind. Everyone had to fight down instinctive terror at her shriek of rage and agony, and the _Terror's_ remaining guns lit up the asteroid field in a blaze of annihilation. Very shortly, there were no more asteroids, nor was there a ship, and anyone with so much as a drop of aetheric talent felt the dying screams of the three druids, erased forever from the universe.

The battle did not last much longer than that. The enemy's secret weapon had been discovered and destroyed without it achieving its goals, and while the sight of the damaged Hoshinthra might have heartened some, others heard her howls of fury, gauged the strength of the Ghost Fleet, and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. As for the tardy General Gvorsh and his fleet... well, he really tried. Unfortunately for him, he found himself fighting alone when the other captains started leaving and Pidge and Keith started stealing his ships, and both Ketzewan and Voan Lenna led three rousing cheers when the flagship was taken. All that was left was the cleanup.

Shiro was past caring at that point. He sagged down onto the edge of the pilot's dais, soaked with sweat and suddenly weak from his efforts, which puzzled him because he hadn't done anything physical but stand there. Zaianne's hand stroked his hair gently and rested on his shoulder, which he found surprisingly comforting. “It's all right,” she murmured, “we seem to have won.”

“I know,” he rasped wearily. “Does... does seeing the future, even in little bits, always tire a person out like this?”

Her fingers tapped the top of his head. “Well, let's see; you're still not up to full strength and won't be for some time, you've got plenty of power but no formal training, you're soul-bonded with a uniquely potent aetheric war machine and five fearsome young pilots, and have just witnessed a fairly good-sized space battle. You're entitled to be a bit out of breath, my son. Be proud that you haven't passed out dramatically in my arms yet.”

Shiro burst into breathless laughter, and then sobered. “Coran, what are our losses?”

Coran hummed, listening to the comm-net chatter. “Not too bad, considering what we were up against. The _Quandary_ made it through without more than a scorch here and there, most of the other big ships are pretty much the same, although the _Terror_ will need some work. Poor old thing, that's the first real damage that she's taken in a long time. The Fleet captains have lost some of their fighters, sadly, but that's the price of war. Clarence and Jasca are fine, and the team are heading over to say hello. Hmm... and to thank Clarence's official ghost for spotting the Druids for us. As dead people go, he's an exemplary fellow. Does that happen often, Madame?”

Zaianne gestured a negative. “It's rare, and the ghost actually has to like the company he's in. If Clarence's crew have been kind to him and have kept up the supply of libation offerings, I see no reason why he shouldn't help where necessary. Any thoughts, Lizenne?”

“ _I'd had the impression that he'd been a reluctant warrior,”_ Lizenne replied, the great blue-green hull of the _Chimera Rising_ sliding into view on the screens. _“It wasn't the basic training that he minded, but being bossed around and treated like scum by his superiors got on his nerves. He has no love for the military, and no liking for those who would hurt his friends.”_

Coran smiled. “I'll pour him a dram myself, then, if I'm privileged to visit. Shall we ask admittance?”

“ _I don't see why not,”_ Lizenne said cheerfully. _“I'd love to see what the Blades have done with Clarence and Jasca since we last met, and we should introduce Shiro to them as well. The more friends we make, the better off we'll be.”_

 

To judge by his companions' noises of approval, the Blades had done wonders for the ancient mobile fortress. It was sparkling-clean, efficiently-appointed, beautifully-designed, and it was hard to believe that it had been policing the Jedrenickan home orbits when King Tutankhamen had been in diapers. They were greeted in the docking bay by a respectful Blade, who proceeded to lead them to the rest of the team. “Hunk insisted on checking the engine,” the big Galra man said with a fond smile, “and the others followed along, if only to thank our ghost for the save. They said that that blast would have hit the _Quandary_ if the Talssenemai hadn't gotten in the way.”

“Yes,” Shiro said grimly. “Will she be all right?”

The Blade shrugged. “None of us are willing to get close enough to ask. Jasca says that she's very angry right now, more that she took damage at all than anything else. She is a very proud person. In our experience, though, if a Hoshinthra is not killed immediately, it will heal in time, no matter how much damage it took.”

_And then it would come looking for revenge,_ the Blade did not say, but they heard it all the same.

They continued on toward the lifts, passing the detention block where a line of prisoners were being put into the cells under the watchful eyes of the Blade of Marmora, some coming along less quietly than others. One scarred and grizzled fellow in particular was roaring wrathfully and fighting his escort with everything he had, at least until one massive Blade picked him up by the scruff of the neck and banged him hard against a wall a few times before tossing him bodily into a cell. Shiro narrowed his eyes at their own escort and asked, “What will happen to them?”

“The officers will be interrogated, under the aegis of the _Quandary's_ chief medic, of course. Yantilee made us promise,” the Blade said calmly, giving him a thin smile. “It works out fairly well; Doc makes our own technicians look like amateurs. Most of the common soldiers will be sent home. There are a few among those who were stationed in this System that enjoyed abusing the locals, and they will be turned over to them for trial and punishment, along with their superiors. Richly deserved, trust me on that.”

Shiro couldn't argue; he knew very well that Humanity had plenty of people like that, who took a certain joy in mistreating people who weren't allowed to fight back. “And those planets with the military training bases on them?”

“The _Quandary_ smashed their starports and every troop transport they could find,” their guide replied with satisfaction. “They can't leave, and they were getting the bulk of their food and supplies shipped in. They have perhaps a month's worth stockpiled. If they want to keep eating beyond that, they will have to make some concessions. Before you ask, the Olkari will be handling that end of things.”

Shiro nodded in grudging satisfaction. The Olkari were a kindly people, and tended not to hold grudges. “You seem to have everything under control, then.”

“With some considerable help from our friends.” The Blade frowned slightly. “It still feels odd to say that. For a very long time, we had none outside the Order. Clarence, we're here.”

A wall panel slid open, revealing a hidden lift that made Zaianne nod in approval; it didn't do to let just anybody down to where the heart of the fortress was. That it was under the direct control of the fortress itself was even better. The lift let them off on the lowest level, which had mostly been given over to teaching space for the Order's new trainees, of which there were many, now; recruitment was up, which surprised Zaianne a little.

“Teravan,” her colleague replied simply. “There was a large Galra population living in the city that was crushed, and they took Zarkon's willingness to sacrifice them, their livelihoods, and their families, just so that he could get Voltron's attention, rather poorly. Word of that disaster has spread, and we've been helping it along a little. The Emperor is nowhere near as popular as he was on that planet and many others, and quite a lot of fine young people wish to avenge those they have lost.”

Shiro's breath hissed between his teeth. He'd had a large part to play in that event. “I'm sorry. I--”

“They already know,” Modhri said reassuringly. “I've kept in touch with Kolanth, and he tells me that they know that it wasn't your fault, and in fact admire the depth of feeling that your team holds for you. Who would you rather follow, Shiro? A man who regards you and all you love as commodities to be used and cast aside at a whim, if he thinks of them at all, or a group who will defy death itself to rescue their friends?”

“Nobody likes it when the people in authority forget that the general citizenry are people, too,” Coran chimed in. “Alfor and his team had to deal with a fair amount of that, yeah, and so did all the other teams. We used to have to topple tyrants right and left, and twice on Quorsdays, sometimes. I've always sort of wondered if the air at those elevated positions gets a little thin sometimes, considering how many absolute rulers go mad. I prefer a more down-to-earth type of authority, myself.”

“Quite,” Lizenne added lightly, looking around with approval. “We've been following your lot around in sheer fascination for over a year now, and I can't imagine us splitting up. Clarence, dear, you look magnificent. Your friends have been very good to you.”

“ _Have they ever,”_ a slightly tinny tenor said happily from a wall speaker. _“Seriously, though, I love these guys. They're a little stiff sometimes and are a bit short-tempered, but you can't beat them for martial skill or sheer professional mayhem. You know, I spent fourteen years as an Ugrant-Class privateer fully crewed by of some of the shadiest characters that Vontak's military press-gangers could flush out of the slums, and not one of those thugs could compare to the least and littlest of my current occupants. By Yeoza's Third Toenail, this lot can make trouble!”_

Zaianne laughed. “We've spent centuries honing our skills, and we've gotten to be quite good at it. How are you getting on with Jasca?”

This time, Clarence's voice was tinged with awe. _“I'm in love. She knows more dirty jokes than the man who programmed me, and old Vottle pab Naslum had won the Systemwide All-Comers Filthy Limerick Championship three times in a row. She can tell stories of the ancient Noble Houses of Galran Prime that will curl your fur, she knows where all of the Dyrchoram emergency caches are buried, and no few of the bodies. She's here, by the way, speaking with me, the Paladins, and my best techs in the engine room right now. Oh, and thanks for the little bottle of lithro you sent along with Hunk, Zaianne. Zerod doesn't often get much of that.”_

“Compliments of the Admiral,” Zaianne replied. “It was her ship that he saved.”

Clarence sighed. _“He doesn't like Haggar either. He hasn't said why, but that woman and her hench-things really upset him.”_

Lizenne's expression darkened, remembering how close she had come to joining that group. “I feel much the same way. You said that Jasca was here?”

“ _Fancy new portable holo-communicator with a custom avatar. One of her boys built it special, and she got him to build me one, too. She gave me a face. An actual_ face. _No ship in my class has ever rated a real avatar. Did I mention that I was in love? I'm in love.”_

“So are we,” the Blade said with a faint chuckle. “Through here.”

They headed through a pair of massive blast doors that looked to be original equipment, and soon beheld an interesting scene. The room was large and very clean, taken up mostly with an enormous and very beautiful apparatus that was half mad science and half deus ex machina. It had all of the parts that Shiro's inner monster-movie-obsessed teenager would have felt necessary: the glassy tubes blazing with strange energies, polished fitments that glittered with colored lights, parts that hummed, thrummed, or beeped melodiously, the mysterious orbs that whirled in filigreed cases, and even the air of shining _purpose_ was spot-on. All they needed now was a mystified adventurer, and the picture would be complete. _Oh, wait,_ Shiro thought, _that's me,_ and he approached the incredible object with a smile for life's habit of imitating art.

 

The artist himself was elbow-deep in one of the more mysterious parts with Pidge and a crowd of fascinated engineers clustered around him as he pointed out how everything worked together. One of them had complained that the current arrangement was flatly impossible, had been tried in several labs hundreds of times over, on and off for centuries without so much as a hope of the current functionality. Hunk was undaunted by this bit of reasoning.

“You guys were doing it wrong,” he told them, pointing out the array of small prisms positioned around the other parts. “I got the idea while we were visiting the Balmera. I don't know whether the Balmerans evolved to be symbiotic with the Balmera, or if they were created by the Balmera to be its... I don't know, maybe to be its mobile parts or something, but they're pretty much the same sort of critter, made mostly of rock and magic crystals. It all works together 'cause everything is just part of the whole, right? This part can't work alone, because it needs all the rest working along with it. Like a planet. Or a person. This thing really is Clarence's heart. Pidge, can you bring up a diagram?”

“Sure,” Pidge said, and nodded to one of their observers, the slightly-transparent image of a middle-aged Vontakle; Clarence had chosen an avatar that was slightly broader across the shoulders than Kezz was, a darker orange in color with longer ears and a slightly larger nose. His eyes were the same friendly amber color, and his clothing echoed a uniform that no Vontakle had worn in eight hundred years. “Do you mind?”

“ _Go ahead,”_ Clarence said generously, ceding the use of his holo-comm to her, _“To tell you the truth, I'd like to see it, too. I was too busy with other things to watch when it was being built.”_

“Yeah, that was a big day,” Pidge said a little nostalgically, then let her perceptions get a feel for the engine as a whole and brought it up in holographic format. She could actually feel it when Clarence saved the images to a permanent memory file for later study and grinned at the gasps and awed mutters from the engineers.

“ _Fancy,”_ another slightly mechanical voice observed. _“Does mine look like that?”_

That was Jasca, who had refined her original avatar into a work of art. She preferred to appear as a Palabekan woman, with the long, powerful torso and limbs, long fuzzy tail, and the slightly feline features characteristic of that people. She, too, was in uniform, and one that declared her to be a Dyrchoram of very respectable rank. Every detail of the image was perfect, its movements smooth and seamless, and it was very difficult to remember that this wasn't a flesh-and-blood person.

“A little,” Hunk said. “Clarence here had to have his whole drive rebuilt from the ground up, since it was really badly busted up. Yours was still in pretty good shape, and we made it a whole lot more efficient. And ethical. Y'know, I wonder if the actual ordinary people of the Empire really know where their power comes from. I mean, it was bad enough at home when we were still using fossil fuels—fossilized swamp goo, yuck—but sucking whole worlds dry of life is worse. What's wrong with collecting solar energy? A single star pumps out tons of that every second, and for free.”

“It isn't as efficient, and it doesn't have the same kick,” a new voice said, making them look around to see the newcomers in their midst, standing a little back with Allura, Lance, and Keith. Lizenne was gazing at the engine with great curiosity. “The Histories tell us that we Galra experimented with every known form of energy that we could find, some more successfully than others. Quintessence is simply the safest to handle while delivering the biggest bang for our buck, as I believe the saying goes. One can even touch it bare-handed without dying horribly most of the time, which puts it well ahead of nuclear fission, I can assure you.”

“It can even be sustainably harvested, if you're careful, and if the machines that you are powering are fuel-efficient,” Modhri said absently, studying the holographic diagram with intense interest. “Greed, alas, often trumps caution, and it's never those in authority who pay the price for it. That's very impressive, Hunk.”

Jasca whirled, and the look of delight on her simulated face was genuine. _“Modhri! How have you been?”_

He smiled warmly at her. “Quite well, but very busy. You seem to have been enjoying yourself, my Lady.”

She giggled wickedly. _“Have I ever. Commander Marmora would have happily tickled the ears of each and every Blade to bind them to her, and I would myself if I had a physical body to do it with. That they've kept her name alive would have warmed her stony little heart, too.”_

“That's good,” Modhri replied, and then sobered. “And Tzairona?”

“ _Homesick.”_ Jasca looked worried, and her eyes strayed to the shrine in one corner of the room. _“She knows why we have to wait on that, but she wants her man back, and as soon as possible. It's been a long time. Speaking of fine men, who is that delicious exotic standing behind you?”_

“Told you so, Shiro,” Lance muttered with a grin as Shiro stepped forward. “Brandy sauce optional.”

Modhri and Shiro shot him quelling looks in stereo, and then Modhri did the honors. “Jasca, Clarence, may I make known to you Takashi Shirogane, 'Shiro' for short, primary Paladin of the black Lion and leader of the Voltron Force? Shiro, I make known to you the live-ships Fort Clarence and Jasca #974-009.1, Jedrenickan mobile fortress and Dyrchoram stealth scout, now mobile comm-hub, respectively.”

Shiro and the two avatars made the regulation polite murmurs of greeting, and Clarence gave him a broad Vontakle smile. _“You'd be the living legend, then. Thanks for the tips you passed to the rest of us during the battle, Shiro, they were a lifesaver for a lot of people. Were you a professional tactician back home?”_

Shiro shook his head a little self-consciously. “Not really. I get hunches about the future, is all.”

Jasca's golden eyes snapped to his face, and she studied him closely. _“Precognition?”_

“Yes,” Shiro replied, recalling that Modhri's ancestress had been a Seer too. “Just starting, though.”

“ _You've the look of one already,”_ Jasca said, and was silent for a moment, her eyes sad. _“I might ask Tzai if she'd be willing to give you some pointers. It would give her something to think about other than Zandrus. You don't mind learning from a dead person, do you?”_

Shiro gave her a twisted little smile. “Why not? I was one for a while, and I've already had some lessons from the Lion himself. If she's willing to teach, I'm willing to learn.”

Jasca nodded. _“I'll ask her, then. It would certainly give me an excuse to hang around the Castle for a little while. If you only knew how much the Commander wanted to get her hands on those big cats of yours... hah! Tzai would have made a dandy Paladin, and probably Zandrus, too! Better than the blockheaded princeling that got the job, anyway.”_

“ _I have to wonder what the Lion saw in him, anyway,”_ Clarence grumbled. _“In the end, he was way more trouble than he was worth, and that was without the witch.”_

Shiro felt his Lion's sorrow for what had become of the bold young hero all those millennia ago, and sighed. “He was a leader, and a good one. Very strong-willed, very level-headed, and he knew how to command, which is a lot harder than it looks.”

Jasca nodded slowly, her expression distant. _“Stiff as a plank, though, and rigid with pride. His whole Lineage was like that. His mother was from a lesser House and did her best, which was probably why he was acceptable at all.”_

“Blaytz, Gyrgan, Trigel, and Alfor really tried to loosen him up,” Coran said, tugging sadly on his mustache. “They did, a little, but by no means nearly enough. I just wish that they'd had more time.”

Jasca scowled. _“Don't we all.”_

Clarence waved a broad orange hand dismissively. _“Too late to do anything about it now. So, how about you tell us something about yourself, Shiro? All we've had to go on are some wild tales from your teammates so far, and we're not sure who to believe. Are you really the one who got Slav out of that supermax prison?”_

Shiro rolled his eyes, remembering that exasperating episode. “Yes.”

“ _You owe my techs an apology, then,”_ Clarence said with a wry smile at the technicians, some of whom were giving Shiro dirty looks. _“Some silly fool let that fellow in here for a peek at my drive, and it took practically the whole cadre—wearing earplugs, I might add—to get him back out of here. Hunk, you're too talented for your own good.”_

Zaianne smiled. “He is, yes, and built a stardrive of a sort that hasn't been in use since my distant ancestors were still living in hide tents.  _Of course_ the silly creature went wild over it!”

Shiro snorted a laugh. “Sorry, but I can't say that I'm not glad to have missed that. Where should I begin?”

Shiro found himself required to start at the beginning, with the trip out to Kerberos and ending with waking up in a cot in the  _Chimera's_ infirmary, limp as a rag and overjoyed just to be free and among friends again. Parts of that tale were difficult for him to tell, even to such a good audience, and he needed badly to sit and rest a little afterward. 

“ _Go and keep Zerod company for a little while,”_ Clarence said sympathetically, indicating the shrine in the corner of the room, _“he won't mind if you plop down on his plinth for a quiet moment. Gods know that enough of my crew like to take a few minutes to relax with him now and again. As for the rest of you, you're needed—we've got another fleet incoming. Someone overslept, I think.”_

“Lotor's?” Keith asked sharply.

Clarence hummed thoughtfully. _“Nope, wrong signature. Sounds like the Jeproba Garrison. That's actually a good thing, since if you knock that fleet out, we'll be able to move on to that System in quick-time. Get going; I'll look after your friend, here.”_

“Will that be all right with you, Shiro?” Allura asked.

Walking back to the Castle felt like too much of an effort right now, and he waved a hand at them. “Go ahead, and be careful. I'll be fine.”

The group left, springing into a run with appalling energy, and Jasca and Clarence's avatars vanished, leaving Shiro alone in the room. Feeling somewhat at a loss, he approached the shrine.

It was quite modest as memorials went, and very similar in some ways to an Earthly burial, being basically a man-sized box on a knee-high plinth and decorated with the appropriate symbols and paragraphs of text in the angular glyphs of Galran script. On top of the casket was a small stand holding the sheet-metal lily that Lance had made, and a silver hip flask; from the number of bottles surrounding that display, each one smelling sharply of alcoholic liquids, the occupant was a fairly popular fellow. Shiro sagged down onto the plinth with a long sigh and rested his face in his hands. Under his rump and feet, he could feel the mobile fortress moving, feel the subliminal shudders through the metal itself as the great guns fired and fighter craft launched. In his heart he felt the Lions roar as they threw themselves once again into the fray, and felt a little anxious for them.

_They'll be fine,_ a faint, slightly hollow voice said quietly, and Shiro was abruptly aware that he wasn't alone.  _We've done the hard part for them already, so this is just playing. You know, I'd never thought that I'd live to see the Lions at all, much less in action. Turns out I was right._

Shiro had come from a culture in which ghost stories were very common; nonetheless, it took some courage to look up. Sitting next to him on the plinth was a Galra man, one of the hairless, slightly scaly sort from Kedrek. His armor was scratched and dented and looked as though it didn't fit him very well, and the style of it was slightly less-advanced than what he was used to seeing. As he watched, the soldier lifted a silver hip flask to his lips and took a sip, and Shiro smelled, very faintly, the tang of the same booze that had floored Lance only a little time ago. “Zerod?”

_The same. You're easy to talk to, having walked on my side of things for a little while. Not as much fun as it looks, eh?_ The ghost gave him a weary smile, and just for a moment, Shiro saw the bones behind the face.  _Eh, it could have been worse._

It could have been much worse. Shiro knew that intimately. “Why did you stay?” he asked the old haunt.

Zerod shrugged and looked away, yellow eyes fixed on some unguessable view.  _Nobody much on the Other Side that I want to see just yet. Something here yet to do. You know how it goes. Kuphorosk's an understanding sort, and gave me leave. Tell that Elikonian that his men brew good lithro for me, will you? I know my homebrews, and this is really top-grade stuff._

They sat in silence for a little time, listening to Hunk's incredible construction sing to itself. Eventually, the ghost felt moved to speak again. _You were in_ her _hands for a time, right? I can tell._

Shiro didn't have to ask which _her_ he meant. “Yeah. Twice.”

Zerod leaned back against his casket with a pained look on his slightly transparent face. The bones were showing again, just a little, as if the strength of his memories were making it hard for him to hold his shape. _I wish that I'd had friends like yours,_ he whispered sadly. _Might not have lost her if I had. We were going to open a distillery, back home on Kedrek. I had a knack for building the 'stills, and no brew-up ever went bad if Chelani'd had her hands in the making of it._

Shiro frowned in puzzlement, wondering what the ghost was getting at. “Your girlfriend?”

_My sister. We'd almost had enough gac to buy space in Old Man Khept'Anz's spare warehouse when the message came in. Emperor's witch wanted her for the Druids._

Shiro went cold. “She answered it?”

_She didn't. Great-Uncle Bhranz did, and so did Dad and all my uncles. Center offered big money for good witches, if they made the cut. Family needed the money. Chelani didn't want to go, I didn't want her to go, but the family forced her into it. I argued hard against sending her, but they wouldn't listen._

Shiro swallowed hard. “I'm sorry.”

_Not your fault._ Zerod sighed and sipped at his flask again. _I felt it when she died. We'd been told that being a Druid was like a metamorphosis, like a bunta crawler turning into a jewelwing. Lies. Chelani and I were really close. You know how it is, when you finish each other's thoughts?_

“Yes. I knew a pair of twins back home who did that,” Shiro replied, and smiled. “My own team's getting there.”

Zerod gave him an envious look. _I saw. Good team. I had that with Chelani. I was her favorite brother. Great-Grandma called it_ 'kenasha-moq besth' _when we were small._ _Two bodies, one blood. I felt what the Emperor's witch put into it, and what it was doing to her, and I felt it spill for the last time at Center, when she let it out rather than let Haggar turn her into a Druid. Laid me low for weeks, and as for setting up 'stills... I became my own best customer. Center used the suicide as an excuse not to send us the gac they'd promised us, too._

Instinctively, Shiro tried to rest a comforting hand on the ghost's shoulder, only to encounter a patch of freezing air where that shoulder should have been. Zerod didn't seem to notice. _Ruined us, that did. Family was in debt already, and Great-Uncle had made promises on the strength of a windfall that never happened. Had to sell everything to cover the debts, including me and my brothers to the Military, and all the time—when I was sober, anyway—I was blaming myself for not fighting harder to keep her at home. Never been good at fighting. All my fighting spirits are in bottle form._

“And that's why you wound up here,” Shiro said, remembering that this place had been a dumping ground for substandard soldiers not so long ago. “Did they really name the fort after a sort of toilet?”

Zerod chuckled. _Pretty much. That ain't_ quite _what an auzorel is, but it's close enough. Gods knew that I belonged in one by the end of it. I had reason, though. By then, I was the last of my Line._

Shiro frowned. “What happened to the others?”

_Wars._ Zerod shook his head and sipped at his flask.  _Empire's mighty, but there's always trouble somewhere. Those did for my brothers. None of us were fighters, not really. Wars at home... well, Great-Uncle Bhranz wasn't good at living within his means, and one of his creditors got tired of waiting on the loan payments. The whole Line, dead in one night, and the House set afire as an example to the others. Cops didn't bother to investigate; they already knew what was going on, and no few of them were involved in it. I'll tell you, it was a relief when that last batch of horath killed me. It doesn't hurt so much on this side._

Shiro didn't know how to reply to that. His own memories of his time in the containment unit were fuzzy at best. On the other hand, the hurting had stopped when he'd been pulled out of the Robeast. “Been there,” he said soothingly.

Zerod faded again, bones showing white in the dim air for a moment before he regained focus, and there were tears in the yellow eyes when they returned. Shiro had the impression that the ghost was nerving himself up for something.

_Yeah,_ he said eventually. _I couldn't face Chelani like this, but what could I have done? Heart of the whole mess was Haggar—if Bhranz hadn't sent my sister away to become a Druid, we would've been able to force him into retirement in a few years, get Grandma or Aunt Tilra to take over as Matriarch, or Mom, or maybe even Chelani herself. I couldn't even seek revenge for her death, lousy, booze-sodden lush that I was. Kuphorosk, though... the Death-God made me a deal. Best hunters wait, He said. No sense running yourself ragged after something faster'n you. If I waited, I could strike. Not to kill, but to weaken, to let the greater hunters get that extra little advantage, and He'd let me in on the feast when they brought it down. I could take my bit of the kill to Chelani, and we'd celebrate it together, and all would be made right. We could go to the Goddess of Life to be reborn without any regrets._

“Which is why you're helping us out, my team and the Blades, and the Ghost Fleet, right?” Shiro asked.

White teeth flashed in a smile that was, just for a second, a skull's. _Smart man. Kuphorosk wants Haggar as bad or worse than He wants Zarkon. He figures He's got a good hunting pack going—the Bone-Spear Lady, the Blade Lady, the Long-Wait People, the Lion Cubs--_

Shiro caught an odd flicker out of the corner of his eye, and a woman's voice in his other ear murmured, _You're telling secrets, Zerod._

Zerod grinned sheepishly and ducked his head. _Oh, hey, Tzai._

Shiro turned his head to see a familiar figure sitting on his other side. He'd been shown the last message of Tzairona and had been told the tale of Modhri's odd ancestry, but he hadn't expected to see the lady herself so soon. He swallowed hard. “Tzairona.”

She winked at him, but waggled a finger in gentle reproof at her fellow haunt. _Mustn't give the game away so soon, soldier._

_It don't matter all that much, Tzai,_ Zerod protested mildly,  _he's the Ghost-Eye Man, and he'll See it all anyway._

_Ah, but the timing!_ Tzairona chided.  _The timing is important. Would you drink from a half-aged barrel of burdrax liquor, my friend? Events, like good spirits, must mature before one experiences them._

Shiro leaned back against the casket, wondering if Yantilee had any more of that Rejolian brandy. “Jasca said that she'd ask you about that. I need to learn how to control it, and you were one of the best. Um. I thought that spirits couldn't travel far from where they'd died?”

Tzairona waved a hand airily. _Ordinarily, yes. In my case, my body is currently entombed in a starcraft that underwent a major aetheric change, courtesy of the green and yellow Paladins, and Clarence has another piece of their work at his core. If only you could see that contraption from this side.”_ Ghost eyes turned for a moment to gaze at Clarence's engine before turning back to twinkle humorously at Shiro. _“Long, incomprehensible explanation-to-lesser-mortals short, there is enough aetheric energy sizzling around both of us that Zerod can loan me the use of his tomb as an anchor. Our hosts like to keep in touch, and that's enough of a bridge to serve._

“Good to know,” Shiro said, starting to feel a little light-headed. Zerod's presence was slow and cool from his cold and lonely death, but there was fire beneath Tzairona's surface; her last days had been of hot pursuit and frantic struggles for survival, and there was a faint smell of hard effort and burning insulation coming from her. The small hole in her breastplate that had let out her life before suffocation or the Gantarash could do it flickered like an ember. “Can you help me?”

Ghost eyes gazed into his like the echoes of gems, and her expression turned grim. _I already have, long ago. I found a rock hidden in the current, one that you will have to navigate around in time, although I didn't know it then. For now... I'm not entirely sure. You've your team to steady you while you explore, and I personally would have sold my grandmother to the Gantars to have had that sort of help during my own training. You've that great cat who has an anchor the size of a battleship sunk into your very soul, man. No Vision, no matter how strong, will steal you away now. Not without a bloody fight, anyway. I See that you've been promised a tutor, although I don't know if she'll be able to do more than teach you a few focusing techniques. As for what I can do..._

She paused, her eyes distant, and she muttered something under her breath that sounded a little like one of Lizenne's cantrips. There was a peculiar sensation in the air, something like a heartbeat and something like the crowded silence between two cannon blasts, and she rippled darkly, like smoke over a firepit. The flames showed through for a moment, and Shiro was forced to look away. He felt something cool and heavy being shoved into his hands, and saw that they now held a silver hip flask. Reflexively, he raised the flask and took a sip, and the substance in it sent a thunderbolt down his spine from backbrain to tailbone. Badly rattled by that, he could not resist when the bones of a woman's hand grasped his chin, and he was made to look through a pale, empty eyesocket and into the heart of Time itself.

There was no describing what he saw there, and his overstrained conscious mind could not contain it. He felt _something_ plunk down into his subconscious like a hot stone into a pool, and he sagged, elbows braced on knees, gasping until his brain stopped whirling in circles. His gut lurched, and he had to concentrate very hard on keeping his lunch where it was supposed to be.

_That will have to do,_ Tzairona said, although she sounded more satisfied than anything else.  _Treasure that gift, Shiro. What made me truly special as a Seer in life was not the length of my range, but my incredible accuracy—ninety-plus percent of the time I was right, and that was nearly unheard of, even in my day. Any twit with sufficient strength can See a thousand years or so ahead, but being able to calculate which path is the right one without going mad is the mark of the ideal Oracle. Not even the Lion could give you that. I've given you mine, since I don't need it anymore. You're decent with those little hunches, but that's not going to be good enough later on._

Shiro pushed himself back upright with difficulty, feeling as though someone had run his head through an industrial press. Repeatedly. “Th... Thanks. I think. Ow. Zerod, what was in that?”

Zerod grinned at him and took a long pull from his flask. _A little something to make it easier. She'd have laid you flat for a week, otherwise. You'll want a good night's sleep soon, but that's all. It don't work that way for any who haven't been dead a little first. Aren't you lucky?_

“I might be.” Shiro heaved a shuddering sigh and willed the crackling in his nerves to subside. “What are you getting out of this, Tzairona?”

Tzairona's eyes narrowed, and her already smoky form became positively volcanic. _I will have back what was taken from me. There are only nine things that I count of worth from my life: my man, my daughter, and my seven sons. They were taken from me and are held away from me still; tell that Ghurap'Han witch of yours to take me home, and soon! I have upheld my part of the bargain, and I_ will _have what is mine!_

Shiro raised a hand for peace, and she subsided, eyes flashing as sulfurously as midsummer heat lightning. “She knows, and Modhri won't let her forget. We just need to thin out the Empire's space navy enough so that we can draw the armada away from the Core worlds. Just enough so that they and Jasca can get through without being destroyed. It'll take some work, but we've made a good start today, and if we keep on targeting shipyards, we'll do even better.”

Tzairona smiled, a brief expression like the lick of a flame. _I can see why you're as valued by your friends as you are. Most wouldn't be able to speak sense at all after a shock like the one you've just had. You need a nap, my friend, and I should be getting back. Give me a boost, Zerod?_

The fallen soldier stood and passed her his flask, from which she swigged with the air of a connoisseur. She vanished in a crackle of ball lightning, and Zerod caught his flask expertly as it fell. _Classy Lady,_ he murmured admiringly, and kissed the flask where her lips had touched it.

Shiro stared at him for a long moment. “Seriously though, what is in that stuff?”

Zerod chuckled and sloshed the contents around, and the sound of it was like the deep ocean. _Wishes. The Blade of Marmora are a tough and self-sufficient bunch, but they're still people, and people want things. If they can't get them through their own work, they ask me. Every offering they bring has a wish in it, and sometimes I can help them. A lot of them wish to be with Jasca, you know. She's a fine Lady. Tzai took one of those to get herself back. You got one from a trainee who wanted help with learning something really difficult. Like I said, I know my brews, and on this side of things, my brews don't go bad. Sleep now, man. You'll be better for it._

Shiro nodded, feeling weariness sweep over him like a wave, and he slumped against the casket and let it take him away.

 

_Shiro?_

The voice came from a long way away, and he wasn't quite sure if he was willing to answer it. He desperately needed this rest; something inside him had been working very hard, and he was unbelievably tired.

_Shiro, are you all right?_

_He's exhausted. Clarence, what the hell happened here while we were busy? It's only been an hour or so, and this room is so thick with aetheric vibrations that the decking is humming with them!_

_Sorry, most of that was me. I had to jump around a lot, and, well, you could say that I might be on the verge of failing an aetheric emissions test. It takes a lot of oomph to move me around, you know._

Someone chortled. _Magic farts?_

_Shut up, Lance. Something really weird happened here just a little while ago, Mom. I can feel... something like smoke, and something like... like... I don't know. It wasn't bad, but..._

_That does feel odd. Lizenne, would you have a look at this?_

Dimly, he felt a callused hand stroke his cheek and rest on his forehead, and then on the nape of his neck, and then he heard what sounded like a muttered expletive. _Clarence, where is your ghost, and kindly ask Jasca if Tzairona's been active._

There was a sort of mechanical chirrup. _As far as I can tell, Zerod's resting in his casket. Ah... Jasca says that Tzai was out for a while—she likes to visit her colleague here sometimes. She's back, but she's resting too. Oh. You think that they might both have had a word with him?_

_Almost certainly. It would have been the perfect opportunity, what with all of us live ones too busy staying alive to interrupt. Something fairly significant happened, and be sure that I will ask him about it when he wakes up. For now, however, he needs to be in a proper bed. Harax, if you would please fetch us a float-pallet or something, I would be most grateful._

A little time later, he was aware of being lifted and laid out on a flat surface, and of motion. There followed some more shocked expostulations, a startled _gronk_ or two, and then someone pulled his boots off, moved him onto a surface that was wonderfully soft, and covered him with a blanket. That seemed to be the end of the excitement, and in that blessed peace and quiet, sleep once again enveloped him in its soft, dark folds.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big hugs and thank yous to those that are kind enough to take a moment out of their day and send us love. We use your warmth to keep our little ice caves livable. ^_^ No doubt about it, Mother Nature comes to my city to get drunk. And unfortunately, she's a MEAN drunk.


	23. An Unexpected Invitation

Chapter 23: An Unexpected Invitation

 

“You can't be serious!” Coran blurted incredulously, earning himself the equivalent of a glare from the alien on the screen.

“ _I do not joke. The Pack is summoned.”_

Shussshorim didn't sound particularly pleased about that either. It had been several days since the battle of Bericonde, and the Ghost Fleet had stayed put during that time to see to it that the System stayed free. That included the _Night Terror,_ who had parked herself in orbit around one of the outer planets to make repairs. Or something like that; the huge gash in her hull hadn't so much as been patched as sort of... scabbed over, and the wound was now visible on her flank as a dull, grayish scar. That suggested a level of bionic science that not even Pidge wanted to contemplate too closely, and everyone had been pleased to allow her her privacy in return for doing lookout duty. The Talssenemai had accepted that task with reasonable grace, which had given the team some breathing room—the Paladins had managed to steal nearly fifty ships for the new home guard, and getting those converted for local use and the new crews trained was taking up all of their time.

Coran didn't think that they would like being called away by the Hoshinthra. “I don't see how that could be possible, Madame,” he said suspiciously. “Jasca's got full-spectrum sensors, and would have told us if someone had sent a message.”

The Talssenemai made a faint hiss. _“Primitives,”_ she growled, and then tried again, this time in pidgin. _“You hear my sons, savvy?”_

Stung at being called a primitive, Coran responded rather stiffly. “Not at the moment, but yes.”

“ _I speak to you through my sons. You speak to me through my sons. Savvy?”_

“On occasion, yes,” Coran said. “Whenever you're being particularly occult, that is.”

Shussshorim snorted, but continued in the same style, probably to annoy him. _“Is no magic-box-talk needed. Sons are part of me. Need no magic talk-box to direct own hands or feet, savvy?”_

Coran had to fight down a smile. “Oh, I don't know, there were a few people I've met back in the day who needed that sort of thing to keep track of their more outlying regions. Why, the B'Molph-Nurus often had to get their extensions fitted with tracking devices, just to keep them from vanishing entirely over the horizon. Rounding up those little tubers on a bright autumn morning was a treat that few were privileged to participate in--”

“ _I remember the B'Molph-Nurus. They were delicious,”_ Shussshorim snapped, losing patience, _“and had longer attention spans than you do. Pay attention, fool! My sons direct their_ k'sshass-spak-nilza. _I direct my sons. The Mystics observe and occasionally direct me in the same way. They have directed me to come home for inspection and repairs, and to invite the inhabitants of the Castle and the_ Chimera _to attend also. I will be leaving in two of the time measurements that the bold spawnling refers to as an 'hour'. You will follow, and you will not deviate from the course that I set even once, or I will leave you to your fate. Is that clear?”_

“Crystal,” Coran said calmly, earning himself another glare-equivalent, but he was damned if he was going to show fear in front of this creature. He'd spent most of his career facing down some of the most horrible creatures that the universe could come up with, and no few of them had yelled at him, too. Personally speaking, he preferred the ones that had flirted with him instead. It would be good for her, anyway; the _Night Terror_ had been a figure of fear for so long that she'd come to expect it in others, and that wasn't healthy. “Would you like a side order of fried thishwizzles to go with your unreasonable demands, Madame?”

There was a moment of chilly silence. _“You will tell them. I will go. If you do not follow, then on your own head, so be it.”_

The connection cut off at that point, leaving Coran tugging at his mustache and humming happily at having scored a few points. A minute or two later, a sharp fingernail tapped him on the top of the head.

“Have you always enjoyed playing with fire, or has someone swapped out your brain for a moth's when I wasn't looking?” Zaianne asked. “The Order has been trying to pinpoint the locations of their colony worlds for centuries, the better to avoid them! That was a very silly thing to do, you know, and she won't forget or forgive it.”

Coran sniffed disdainfully. “Oh, she's just sore and peevish at the moment. You can't let things like this rattle you, you know—the best way to reduce a monster's power is to laugh at it. Works like a charm ninety-nine percent of the time.”

Zaianne sighed and fined him a light swat to the back of the head. “Perhaps, but she's that last one percent. Quite a lot of my colleagues found that out the hard way over the years.”

Coran gave her a narrow look. “Pidge hasn't had any trouble with her.”

“Pidge is small, young, fierce, brave, and is the instrument of a very great power,” Zaianne reminded him. “There may be even more to her and the others than that, if what Zerod was hinting at is true. My little niece fascinates her, that's clear enough, and she has some small respect for the others.”

Coran had to consider that for a moment. At Lizenne's insistence, Shiro had told them all in great detail what had happened to him while Voltron was out bashing up that belated enemy fleet, and the dragons had confirmed his story. Strange forces were indeed swirling around them at every turn, and the fact that the old ghost had referred to some of their number by the sort of titles traditionally used in epic legends and prophecies was worrying Zaianne somewhat. It wasn't uncommon in those old tales for one or more of the heroes to die, and they'd come far too close to losing some of their number already.

Coran grunted and laid a hand on the comm switch. “It's no fun being the faithful squire sometimes, isn't it? You're left out of all the great triumphs most of the time, and you're expected to clean up after the others as well. Hello, team, can you hear me?”

“ _Loud and clear, Coran,”_ Allura answered promptly. _“What do you need?”_

“I've just had a talk with the _Night Terror,_ and the old dear informs me that the Castle and the _Chimera_ have won an all-expenses-paid trip to her beautiful hometown, courtesy of the Mystics, leaving in two hours or she'll bite my head off.”

“ _What?!”_

Coran flinched at the mass squawk of surprise and dismay—that wasn't just Allura, that was everybody. “'Fraid so, team, she was quite insistent about it. Might be important.”

“ _It is.”_ That was also a choral answer, from both Shiro and Lizenne, both in identically grim tones.

“That bad, is it?” Coran asked.

Lizenne sighed.  _“Coran, please try to understand. Haggar had their homeworld and eleven colonies smashed to pea gravel because she feared them._ She  _feared_ them.  _Having encountered them myself once before, I don't blame her, for all that they were entirely civil to me. If the Mystics want to have a close look at the Paladins, it's probably a good idea to comply. Invitations of this nature are so rare as to be almost unheard-of.”_

“ _We're coming,”_ Shiro said over the protests of his team with that strange certainty that Coran was starting to recognize as coming from the man's budding oracular talent. _“It's a good idea to make the best impression that we can on them, people. The Hoshinthra... we're going to need them later.”_

There was something about his tone that made them go very quiet for a long moment. _“We have got to get you over to Omorog soon,”_ Lance grumbled. _“Okay, but if they give me nightmares, you get to sing me to sleep.”_

“ _Ditto,”_ Hunk said darkly. _“Those guys are bad news.”_

There was a sigh from Allura. _“Well, as my mother used to say, it's better to have them on the inside_ sabriquiting _out than on the outside,_ sabriquiting _in. We'll be back in the Castle soon, Coran.”_

“ _What does_ sabriquiting _mean?”_ Pidge asked.

“ _Never you mind,”_ Allura replied.

“ _I get the idea,”_ Keith grumbled, _“Be there in ten, Coran. Have you told Yantilee yet?”_

“I'll do that in just a tick,” Coran replied, gazing up at the huge ship in the upper-right corner of the Castle's screens. “In the meantime, finish up whatever you're doing, see if Nasty wants to come along, that sort of thing. See you soon.”

 

“My Lord, please!” the Head Foreman begged, “those are a special consignment! We are under exclusive contract with the Ghamparva—I _cannot_ allow you to take those!”

Lotor cast his eyes over the long row of modestly-sized, powerful starcraft, and smiled when he saw the covetious expressions on the faces of his fleet Captains. He had recently learned that even the highest military officials had little or no chance of ever getting their hands on the _Narvorak, Kevrachi,_ and _Vishta-_ Class ships that the elite terrorist-hunters held so strictly for their own use. Such craft were said to have all of the very latest, the very most top-secret systems and weapons, the fastest warp drives, the most sensitive sensors, and the fleet Captains had started salivating when they learned that Lotor was intent on claiming a lot of them. Only one Shipyard—Nelargo—made them, and it pleased him somewhat that the same Lineage that had spawned the Rogue Witch also owned and operated the Shipyard. Losing this fine assortment of ships would be a fitting price to pay for having produced so troublesome a woman. That it would also discomfit the Ghamparva only made it better. They had been watching him closely of late, and Lotor did not like that.

“I insist,” he informed the Foreman calmly. “I require them in order to rid the Empire of certain, very serious threats. Threats that my own father has charged me with neutralizing. Do you deny the will of the Emperor?”

The Foreman sagged. “I can't. I still can't let you have them. Not only do I not have the authority, my Lord, but I don't have the ability. Ghamparva ships are keyed to their pilots, and the protocols for establishing those gene-links with the ships' AI's are the sole possession of the Matriarch. Lady Ghurap'Han takes her business agreements very seriously, and the Ghamparva are very dangerous when annoyed. We have many fine new ships that are not so risky to take, my Lord. Kindly consider those first, please.”

Lotor cocked a hard look at the middle-aged Galra, who didn't flinch; indeed, the worn-looking man seemed to be well-used to receiving the disapproval of his superiors. “Do you think me unable to face the ire of one old woman and my father's pet killers, Foreman Girosk?”

Foreman Girosk sighed and returned his gaze with a warning one of his own. “No, my Lord. I think that you are perfectly able to face them, and even of getting what you want from them. I merely point out that they will not forget or forgive it if you force either of them to breach a contract, and that could prove risky later. Shall I take you to the Matriarch's office, my Lord?”

In truth, he was curious to see what sort of Family leadership could have produced someone like Lizenne. “Do that. I will simply have to be charming, I suspect, rather than forceful.”

The Foreman vented a bitter snort. “You aren't the first to think that, my Lord. This way. Kashinth, look after the other gentlemen, will you?”

A much younger man who had been standing diffidently nearby nodded and turned to Lotor's Captains with a respectful bow, offering them the refreshments and entertainments of the visitor's lounge. There was a definite family resemblance between the two men, and one that struck Lotor as oddly familiar. “Not Ghurap'Han yourself, are you?” Lotor asked the Foreman as he led the way to the offices.

“No, my lord. Khorex'Var,” the older man said tonelessly. “Our Lineage is closely associated with them, though.”

Lotor hummed. He'd heard that name before. “There is a Modhri Khorex'Var, I believe. The Rogue Witch's man.”

Girosk's backward glance was unreadable. “Yes, my lord. Something of a family scandal. The Matriarch declared 'em both disowned and dead. We don't talk about it.”

No, they wouldn't, Lotor knew. Ghurap'Han was an ancient House, predating the Empire itself, and a very proud one; no lady of such high breeding would normally deign to consider a man from a common Lineage. Come to think of it, he'd heard of some other sort of scandal involving Ghurap'Han and the Szaah'Tirr branch of the Imperial Lineage some years ago, but he had been too busy with his own affairs to bother with the constant, subtle social warfare that the Great Houses were forever embroiled in. He smiled at the memory. He had just come into possession of his private fleet when that little fiasco had hit the newsnets, as a matter of fact, and had still been putting it through its paces when it had died down, and beyond that, he hadn't bothered to seek out the details. Putting down rebellions for his father had been far more interesting and enjoyable than Courtly intrigue, although his brothers had participated enthusiastically. He wondered, offhand, if there were any of them left. He and his blood kin had drifted apart after his mother had left the Center, and he'd never met her side of the Family. Not that he was particularly interested, of course. She'd come from a wealthy but not terribly noble trade House, and he had better things to think about than the price of prasmits on the open market. Rising through the ranks to become Crown Prince had been more than enough to keep him occupied.

The office that the Foreman led him to was large and well-appointed, but left no doubt in his mind that this was strictly a place of business, and the elderly woman sitting at the desk was all business as well. Lady Inzera Ghurap'Han was slender and spare, with more silver than purple in her elegantly-styled hair, and had been something of a beauty in her youth. While Lotor had never met with her grandniece, he had seen images, and the family resemblance was very clear, right down to the fierce pride and born-in-the-bone arrogance in the woman's expression and posture. She showed her Lineage's wealth in the fabric of her clothing and in the gems that glinted from her ears, throat, and hands; for all that the style was modest, she wore best-quality silk and first-quality gems. Her eyes, although they had paled with age, were diamond-hard and razor-sharp, and her expression was disapproving when Girosk stepped through the door.

“What is it, Girosk?” she snapped, “I told you that I was not to be disturbed.”

The man cringed slightly at her sharp tone. Just a little, but Lotor's experienced eye caught the tiny flinch, and Girosk's voice was humble when he spoke. “Prince Lotor to see you, my Lady. He wants to talk to you about those new Ghamparva ships.”

Lotor did not have much experience with older females, or with Matriarchs in general. His mother had only been willing to put up with living in the Consort's Suite in the Center until Lotor and his brothers had come of age, and Haggar had no maternal instincts at all. His father had taken no interest in him until Lotor had actively started seeking to achieve his current rank, and he and his brothers had been raised the rest of the way by a series of tutors and instructors. This woman would not be out of place in a military academy, he thought—the eyebrow she lifted at him had the same effect as a sword raised to strike.

“So I see. Girosk, you are dismissed. Do not come again unless I call you.”

Girosk bowed, mumbled something respectful, and vanished with surprising speed.

Lady Ghurap'Han watched his retreat with a certain cruel satisfaction before rising to her feet and offering Lotor the bow and salute that his rank demanded, although there was nothing submissive at all about that action. “Greetings, your Highness. I am pleased to report that the latest run of Ghamparva craft that your father has ordered is now complete and ready to fly in his service. In truth, I am a little surprised to see you here; normally, he just sends Tashrak along to check up on our progress.”

Lotor knew that name. Tashrak Kohaak'Naz ranked highly in the Ghamparva's command staff, and terrified everyone around him even when he was in a good mood, although this woman didn't seem to mind getting periodic visits from him. Lotor gave her an appreciative smile. “You are braver than I, if you can be so casual about hosting the man, however briefly.”

She puffed an impatient breath and waved a hand dismissively. “He has duties to see to, my Lord, as do I. We get along well enough. What do you desire from me?”

There would be no point in trying to flatter this woman, or in trying to charm her; Girosk had been right about that, so he came right to the point. “The Ghamparva ships. All of them. I require them to complete a pair of errands that the Emperor has set me.”

She stood very still for a long moment, as if she hadn't quite been able to believe what he had just said, her eyes as hard as yellow diamonds. “That is quite impossible, my Lord,” she said coldly, and he could practically feel the temperature in the room drop. “One or two might have been permissible, if you had written orders from the Emperor, but no more than that. Certainly not all of them. The contract between my House and the Order of Ghamparva is very strictly-written. No one but the Ghamparva may operate those craft. I will not risk the reputation of my House or my Shipyard, my Lord, not even for you.”

“Is that so?” he murmured mildly, although his eyes narrowed.

“Very much so,” she shot back. “If you can get your father's permission and the permission of the Commander of the Ghamparva as well, I might see about constructing a few of the lesser-grade craft in those series, and ones without the proprietary systems installed. I warn you, however, that the price for them will be steep; we are already on a very tight schedule building standard military craft, since that miserable Voltron thing keeps smashing up every ship sent against it. Adding more Ghamparva-grade craft to the lineup will require the construction of a whole new specialized orbital bay, and that alone will take months.”

“I need those ships now,” Lotor said, undaunted by her censorious glare. “Father has ordered me to destroy none other than the _Night Terror,_ which is also very hard on conventional craft, and Voltron as well, which is arguably worse. Where ordinary battleships will fail, the Ghamparva craft may be more successful. As Crown Prince and under direct orders from the Emperor himself, I may freely requisition whatever craft I please. I have already had two planet-busters, both of which were not able to handle those foes. Consider the boost to your precious reputation, my Lady, if one of your Shipyard's products came back bearing the skull of a monster and the Empire's greatest foes in chains. While I would prefer that you gave them over willingly, I am in a position to force the issue. Particularly in light of the actions of one of your grandnieces, and her lover, whom I am also obligated to detain.”

Her eyes flashed with tightly-controlled fury, and one be-ringed hand tapped sharply on her console. A moment later, a screen popped up with the face of a middle-aged man on it, blinking nervously at her. From the embroidered sigil on his shoulder, this was a legal consultant, and a very senior member of his practice. _“Yes, my Lady?”_ he asked.

Lady Inzera shot Lotor a look that could have blown a hole in a battleship. “I require advice. I seem to have a Crown Prince standing in my office, threatening to force me into giving him no less than thirty brand-new _Nikvorak, Vishta, and Kevrashti-_ class ships, in direct breach of the contract that I hold with the Ghamparva. Must I allow him to take them, or can I call Security to throw the Royal Personage into the nearest public waste receptacle?”

The lawyer's eyes bulged in shock, although whether that was for Lotor's ambitions or Lady Inzera's suggestion, the Prince didn't know, and then he became very busy with his own files. At last, the man looked up with a chagrined expression. _“My Lady, does the Prince act under orders?”_

“He says so, although I have seen no written proof.”

The lawyer rubbed at his chin and shook his head. _“I am very sorry to inform you that he is in the right. There are several precedents for this sort of situation, and they have all fallen out in favor of the Princes, whether or not they had documentation. You are technically allowed to challenge his claim by means of single combat, although such a bout would have to be to the death.”_

Lady Ghurap'Han humphed. “I am prohibited from doing that under my Line's own bylaws. May I appoint a Champion to fight him for me?”

Lotor smiled; at least this woman's commitment to a long-standing agreement was admirable, even if her intransigence wasn't.

The lawyer heaved a sigh. _“There have been numerous challenges of that nature, the most recent occurring five hundred years ago, when the then-current Matriarch of Bazal'Hok contacted the contract-holder and designated his eldest son as Champion to fight the Crown Prince for her—her being in advanced old age at the time and could barely walk. The bout ended with both combatants dead, and the Emperor claimed the spoils anyway as weregild for his son.”_

The old woman growled and favored Lotor with an icy look. “It seems that I have no choice, then. Any chance that I might tie this matter up in court for a decade or two?”

“ _Perhaps, but only if the Prince is attempting to claim the ships for frivolous purposes. If he does have a pressing need, say, hunting down his father's enemies or removing a clear and present danger from Empire space, then you are required to forego that option. I am sorry that I was not able to please you, my Lady. Shall I compose a message to the Ghamparva for you?”_

“Do that, and include every bit of legal precedent that you can find. I will not be held responsible for this, and I will want protection and means of legal recourse if the events of this day come back to haunt us.” Lotor received another withering look, which he returned with the sweetest smile that he could muster. “Is there truly no other means by which to stop him?”

The lawyer shrugged helplessly. _“Not without incurring a number of reprisals that you can ill-afford to take, my Lady. Refuse him and throw him out regardless of his rights, and your Lineage might or might not find itself stripped of property and power, or perhaps shipped to Golraz Beta on a slave galley, or even executed in your entirety. If the Emperor is serious about this... is the apprehension of Voltron involved?”_

“So I am told,” Lady Ghurap'Han growled.

The lawyer nodded. _“Then he will not brook opposition. It is a standing Decree, I am afraid, and one that has been in force for longer than my entire Lineage has existed. No one may stand in the way of the capture of the Lions. Should you do so, your entire House might be destroyed, your holdings confiscated, and the Ghamparva might well decide to appropriate Nelargo Shipyard entirely for their own use. I have had to assist in several similar cases dealing with the Ghamparva as well; that your House has been scrupulously exact in its dealings with the Order for centuries simply will not matter to them. They will not care. Not if it means that they get a Shipyard of their very own to play with. They might even demand the right to assume the indenture of your subordinate House as well, to serve as their labor and technical corps.”_

The old woman's face hardened. “Absolutely not. They are _mine._ Shipyard and Khorex'Var alike. Very well, then. Compose that message and make it convincing. I will compose one to the Commander of Ghamparva myself and meet with him in person if it becomes necessary, and I will also file a complaint with the Throne.”

“ _Noted and recorded, my Lady,”_ the lawyer acknowledged solemnly, _“signing out.”_

Lady Ghurap'Han cut the connection and opened a hidden compartment set into the surface of her desk. This revealed a keypad, over which her fingers blurred for a moment; in response, another hidden section slid open to reveal a data card. Lifting this out of its hiding place, she turned to Lotor with an expression so carefully neutral that it was very nearly a declaration of war. “The key-codes for the ships,” she said, handing him the card. “Head Foreman Girosk is well-acquainted with the procedure. Choose your pilots with care, your Highness, for once their gene-identity is locked in, the ships will accept no other. I wish you the joy of your acquisitions, my Lord, and may they bring you everything that you deserve.”

Lotor's eyebrows lifted at this dubious blessing, so very like the one that the Head Librarian at the Kithraxen Free Archive had given him. “I am sure that they will bring me to victory,” he responded lightly. “Considering Nelargo Shipyard's reputation for excellence, how can they not? Good day, my Lady.”

 

Nasty did not want to come along. One might have said that he most extremely did not want to come along, and threatened to cancel the contract if Pidge were to try to force him. Since he was still missing a napkin ring, two butterknives, the gravy boat, two condiment shakers, and a dessert fork from his silverware set, they knew that he meant it. Instead, Allura and Pidge negotiated for a temporary recess (assuming that the Mystics didn't slaughter and eat them, Nasty grumbled) until the errand was over with.

That was just fine, Pidge considered, since she didn't want to know what the Mystics would do if he got up to the usual Unilu habits of shoplifting and pickpocketing over there, assuming that non-Warrior Hoshinthra had shops to burgle or pockets to pick. Even Lizenne, who had actually visited a colony once, had no idea.

“They live in ice caverns, for the most part,” she told them, once Nasty had been returned to the _Quandary_ for safekeeping and the Castle and the _Chimera_ were on their way into the outer orbits to join the _Night Terror_ , “and I wasn't allowed to go exploring. What little I did see was beautiful, but not particularly informative, which was precisely how they wanted it.”

“What can you tell us about it?” Allura asked.

Lizenne frowned at the middle distance. “Mostly what I remember was that it was dark, and very cold. You'll want to wear your armor, make no mistake about that, and turn up the heat to maximum. The Warrior Class is able to tolerate an unbelievably wide range of temperatures, but the rest of them prefer living in a comfortable deep-freeze. At least eighty degrees _szarkeh_ below the freezing point of water, and often more. A Hoshinthra feels perfectly perky at temperatures that would flash-freeze you and I within seconds. That goes double for the plants and animals that they've developed; I was privileged to see one of their gardens, set as a sort of centerpiece at a crossroads, right beneath an enormous ice lens, so as to concentrate the sunlight.”

Hunk rubbed at his chin thoughtfully, gazing up at the dark ship in the screens. “They don't get much light?”

She shook her head. “Hoshinthra evolved on an ice world, one that was... well, sort of the equivalent of your Pluto, or perhaps one of Saturn's moons, only more or less Earth-sized, and with enough iron at the core to maintain a decent magnetic field and a proper atmosphere. At that distance, the sun is no more than a particularly bright star, and the planet is in a perpetual twilight when it isn't lit solely by the ambient starshine. They still had flowers, though. Crystalline, delicate-seeming, and incredibly beautiful. There were insects much like beetles, butterflies, and dragonflies that were much the same. There were even small animals in that garden, grazing on the growths there, and they were equally magnificent. As lovely as it was to me, I cannot help but wonder how the natives perceived it, who have completely different senses than I do.”

“What did you talk to them about?” Shiro asked.

She smiled ruefully. “This and that. I was much younger and sillier at that time—this was some considerable time before I had holed up on Zampedri, remember. Mostly, I was wildly curious about them; not for any particular reason, but just because they were a secret. I'd had good luck with hunting other secrets in the past, and took up that challenge simply because no one else had ever been able to solve it. The Mystics had never seen that attitude in my people before, and decided to allow me to find them so that they could get a closer look. I believe that we interested each other.”

“Interesting way to put it,” Lance said, squinting at the gray streak on the _Night Terror's_ flank. “What did they want to know?”

Lizenne shrugged. “To tell you the truth, I'm not sure. It was more like the chatter you get in a children's tea party than anything else. What little projects and achievements we'd made for ourselves. Interesting things that we'd seen. Jokes, stories, and poetry. What sort of candies we liked best. Who had a boyfriend, and what was he like. Only occasionally did we touch on more adult matters. I'm sure that they picked up a great deal more from me than I did from them, of course, and approved enough of it to let me leave their world alive. I had not ever expected to be allowed back.”

Everybody looked up nervously at the black ship. “Yeah, um...” Keith said nervously. “Do they all look like the Warriors?”

Lizenne waggled a hand. “Yes and no. The Warriors are the Class whose genetics lie the closest to the original, ancestral sophont. Mind you, I didn't see much of the general populace. From what I saw, the other Classes do resemble the Warriors somewhat. The Mystics are smaller, with gemlike scales, and are built for speed rather than mayhem, with higher-browed skulls and more elaborate antennae. I did see a Maintenance-Class individual, which was stocky and bluish-silver, and had more arms than the others did. I only caught a glimpse of a Sea-Provisioner, but that was quite enough!”

“Sea-Provisioner?” Zaianne asked.

She nodded. “The world had some nice deep oceans beneath the ice, all of them teeming with sea life. Since most of their food comes from those oceans, someone had to manage the stocks, and so a Class was developed to look after submarine matters.”

“Sea-monster Doom Moose,” Pidge muttered. “Ugh.”

Lizenne chuckled. “You could say that. You Humans have a mythical creature that does double duty as an astrological sign—the Capricornus. Imagine a Hoshinthran version of that, and you're not too far off the mark. There are many others that I never got a look at. Perhaps this time I'll see more.”

Mostly what they saw was nothing much. Shussshorim greeted them with a bare minimum of words, transmitted a series of very strange coordinates to the Castle, and leaped away into hyperspace. Allura, who was taking a turn at piloting the Castle today, opened a wormhole and followed, the _Chimera_ following closely behind. This led them out into a stretch of absolute nowhere—a place where a black hole had recently wandered through the area, devouring every bit of space junk available. Barely visible in the stripped-out darkness, the _Night Terror_ sent them a new set of coordinates and vanished. The next destination was in the thickest part of a nebula, with the dust, gas, and emission hash from a swarm of newborn stars foiled any chance for either ship to get their bearings. Their only guide was the third set of coordinates from Shussshorim, who didn't hang around for more than a second after transmitting them.

Destination Three was even more dramatic, being a white-hot whorl of dust and gases wherein a baby star was forming up. Destination Four was in the outer orbits of a magnetar, which played merry hell with the _Chimera's_ navigation system. Number five brought them out in the middle region of a dying dwarf galaxy, the remaining suns either huge and red or tiny little pinpoints of dim light. It was obvious that their guide wanted them to be well and truly lost before she would allow them anywhere near her home, and they couldn't blame her. Not after what had happened last time. It took three more jumps to strange and confusing corners of space to get to their final destination, and after the scenes of cosmic drama, it was something of a letdown.

The Hoshinthra colony world was perhaps the size of Venus, and it was a cold, dim, nearly featureless sphere that looked like an old ping-pong ball, hanging in the far orbits of an unremarkable yellow-green star. There were only a few other planets closer in, a ferociously pink Hot Jupiter that practically skimmed the surface of its parent star, one or two small rocky planets with no life to call them home, and a disappointingly gray, middling-sized gas giant out beyond that. After the rich profusion of the Bericonde System, this place didn't seem worth anybody's time. Zaianne, whose Blade training had included the art of camoflage, nodded in approval. “Ye Gods, this place is dull. How perfect.”

“Not so dull as all that,” Coran warned in a low voice. “See that scattering of space debris a little way further out? Those aren't asteroids.”

He was quite right. What looked from a distance to be no more than the usual scattering of trash left over from the formation of the planets was nothing of the sort. It was a vast fleet of ships—hundreds, if not thousands of them, the smaller ones showing a mottled, irregular pattern of light and dark on their oddly-shaped hulls, while the great, reflective-black shapes of their larger siblings loomed nearly invisibly in the blackness behind them. Hunk frowned, his eyes flicking between those and the _Night Terror_ , his expert eyes noting the differences between them. “They're newer than Shussshorim is. A lot newer, and a lot more advanced. Pidge, they might have stolen your cloaking system, too.”

“No way, I set it up to blow if anyone tried that,” Pidge said in a low voice, trying to count them and not having much luck. “Wow. Everybody be on your best behavior, okay? I really don't want us to have to fight our way out.”

“Nor do I,” Allura said, glancing worriedly at Coran's console. “I think that they're blocking our starchart system. I can't bring it up! Coran, can you detect the nearest inhabited solar system?”

“No. This whole System is one big sphere of silence,” Coran replied, tapping at the controls. “On the other hand, we're safe for the moment. I very much doubt that this place is on the Imperial Database, anyway. They simply won't be able to detect it. I can still reach the _Chimera,_ thankfully. Think we should bring along the mice and dragons when they let us dock?”

“ _There is no need for that,”_ Shussshorim hissed from their comms, sounding oddly subdued. Weary, they realized, as if in need of a nap; the multiple jumps must have been hard on the wounded Warleader. _“The Mystics are aware of them, and that is enough. You will follow me, and dock where I dock. You will be transported to the surface from there.”_

“Wouldn't it be easier to take the Lions?” Keith asked uneasily.

“ _No,”_ Shussshorim replied shortly, and began to head toward the pale, icy world.

Hidden behind the planet was an orbital station of some sort, a broad, flattish ring of glossy-black hullmetal, nearly invisible against the blackness of space; light reflected from the planet below revealed vent-like openings along the sides and bristly podlike structures of unknown function in neat rows all along the flat, segmented upper surface. Long beams projected from the rim at regular intervals, and the inner space was an odd strutwork of more beams, all interwoven in a dizzying pattern. The  _Night Terror_ slotted herself neatly between a pair of beams on the outer rim, allowing a glimmering network of silver strands to spring out from those and bind her hull in place.

“ _I'm not sure that I like that,”_ Modhri muttered from the _Chimera._

“I don't either, but we have little choice,” Allura said, gingerly following their guide's example.

The Castle approached the docking beams with care; while it wasn't much larger than the  _Night Terror,_ it was broader in build, and the Chimera was broader still; everybody got a mild case of the creeps when the station, if that was what it was, shuffled the beams a little to make room. Not by sliding them on tracks, but moving them in the same way that a sea anemone reorganized its tentacles. There was some very strange technology involved in that structure. The same silvery filaments hissed out of the beams' ports all the same, anchoring the two ships firmly between them, and another pair of extrusions extended themselves, linking up with the personnel hatches.

“Complete with airlock,” Coran muttered thoughtfully, checking his instruments. “Universally adaptable, and a very nice seal, too.”

“ _You may disembark,”_ a peculiar, echoing voice said through the comms, making him jump. _“A guide will show you to the transport station. Perambulate briskly, visitors.”_

“Well, we've been told,” Shiro sighed. “Armor up, team. We've got an appointment to keep.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, a big hug and thanks to everyone who comments or leaves kudos. They make it worth chewing through the straps every morning.


	24. Strange Encounters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's been a rush of new kudos for our fics lately, and we just wanna say again that we love you guys so much for your encouragement. This story has kind of eaten our lives, and the fact that people enjoy it is what makes the effort worth it. Thank you all!

Chapter 24: Strange Encounters

 

Pidge shivered in her armor, and wasn't alone in that. If anything, it was colder inside the station than it was outside, and she could feel the chill of it right through the suit. Some of that chill might have been psychological as well; while the halls weren't lined with the gruesome trophies that Shussshorim liked to sport, everything was that same pearl-gray, everything was still uncomfortably dim, and the feeling of being watched was precisely the same. Like the _Night Terror's_ interior, it was also apparently empty. Even here, especially here, the locals were not interested in showing outsiders more than absolutely necessary. There was something weird about the station itself as well, something that she couldn't quite put her finger on. The sound of their boots on the decking wasn't quite right, nor was the oblong shape of the corridor itself, and the walls had a sort of satin sheen that didn't look like paint, and less like metal. Even the dots and stripes of grayish light on the walls and ceiling were wrong somehow, and in a way that she'd seen somewhere recently, but couldn't quite remember where.

“Wow, but this feels weird,” Lance said quietly, shivering a little. “Sort of... sort of like stage fright, only that sort you get when there's nobody in the seats, but you can still feel the crowd watching, and they're thinking that you had better be good.”

Every Human in the group nodded, school plays having been an ancient and unavoidable tradition the world over, and apparently the same had been true on Altea. “That's precisely right,” Coran muttered, “some of my relatives were of a theatrical nature, and I had the privilege of visiting some of the most historically-important theaters in my youth. In those breathless hours before a big production when the doors were still locked and the actors still preparing, yeah, the seats stood there, waiting, and radiating expectation. Gave me the willies.”

Modhri shifted uncomfortably, and groped for the blaster that he'd been required to leave behind. “Not far from where I was born, there is a natural amphitheater. It's a historical site, and one of the few places in the Domain that has been preserved in pristine condition since ancient times. Many of the greatest leaders of the Homeworld's history gave speeches there, the great Queens and their mightiest warriors, rallying the people against this foe or that, or making announcements of crucial alliances. You can still hear the roar of the crowds there, if you know how to listen.”

“I've been there,” Zaianne said softly, “and I have heard them, and felt the echoes of their pride.”

“Very perceptive of you,” Lizenne said, nudging at the floor with a toe. “This station is alive.”

“Wait, what?” Lance blurted, staring down at the floor in horror. _“Alive?_ Like the _Night Terror?”_

“No. More like a Weblum, or a Balmera,” she pointed at the pale glows on the walls. “Biolights, and this hall is made of something like bone. One of the Scientist Class's little projects, I feel, and very likely intelligent and capable of understanding everything we say. It's actually a very clever idea. Living things are self-maintaining, self-repairing, and self-reproducing. Self-defending, too, and if the enemy is too great, it can simply leave. Try getting a conventional orbital habitat to do that.”

Suddenly everything fell into place; while the proportions of their surroundings might have been wrong for a machine, it was perfectly natural for the inside of an organism. The mental adjustment was jarring, and they all jumped when the same voice that had greeted them earlier spoke again, this time from an object that Pidge had seen before.

“ _Correct,”_ said a floating pearl-gray ovoid that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere. _“You will follow this unit to the landing pods, visitors. Do not deviate from the set course.”_

They knew better than to object, and followed the drone down the hall in apprehensive silence. It wasn't all that long a walk, but it seemed endless, and lonely.

“Where is everybody?” Keith groused, his nerves making him irritable. “Is our whole visit going to be like this?”

“Calm down, Keith,” Shiro said, although his own voice was tense. “If what Pidge told us about her visit to the _Night Terror_ was standard operating procedure, then probably. We're not alone; the Hoshinthra are keeping their distance, and I doubt that the Warriors are the only ones who can turn themselves invisible. We aren't going to be allowed to see anything that they'd prefer to keep private.”

“Which is everything,” Lance said with a narrow look at the drone. “It almost makes me want a pair of those antennae myself, _and don't you tell me that the Scientists can give me some, egghead.”_

The drone forbore to comment, thankfully, and led them into a large oval-shaped room where a pod transport was waiting for them, another smooth, pearl-gray egg shape that slid aside a section to allow them in. “Just like Shussshorim's pods,” Pidge muttered, stepping inside and frowning at the bare interior. “I wonder how these things work. There's nothing to them but the shell.”

“Don't try to find out,” Modhri murmured, “You might not like the answer. Come on, everybody, let's get this over with.”

The section slid closed behind them once they were all inside, and there was a faint feeling of motion, and then nothing at all for about five or six minutes. When the pod opened again, it was into an arctic paradise.

All three peoples had come from temperate worlds and had at least seen pictures of the ice caverns that formed in cold-latitude glaciers, and knew how beautiful such formations could be. The Hoshinthra had evolved in that environment, and had only enhanced that natural glory. The room they stepped out into was as vast and open as the nave of a major cathedral, which it in some ways resembled. The roof was domed and held up by arches and columns that had been sculpted into fluid and flowing shapes, shading from that special deep-glacier blue into white, and then into glass-clear as they approached the peak, which allowed in a modicum of light. Long galleries ran along the walls in several levels, with wide arched doors leading to who-knew-where, and a large sunken garden took up the center of the floor. Just as Lizenne had said, there was a lush profusion of this world's version of flowering plants, leaves and blossoms alike glinting like gems while small bright things hummed busily from bloom to bloom. There were willow-like trees with branches like bejeweled bead curtains, glassy vines with extravagant flowers, long twisting spires of something like reeds that glowed in soft colors, delicate, lacy fernlike growths like the patterns of frost one got on windows in winter, and many, many more. It was absolutely breathtaking, and something in Lance's soul wanted to become one with this magnificence in ice.

“Wow,” he whispered, turning in a slow circle to take it all in. “Just... just wow. It's beautiful. How can people who can build this make things like the Warleaders? It's... it just doesn't make sense.”

Zaianne snorted. “Boy, I might say the same for Humanity. Your own people can put together places like the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, and yet there was that disgusting mass slaughter during your second World War that nobody had the sense to nip in the bud before it got out of control.”

“The Hoshinthra were required to create the Warleaders in response to outside aggressors,” Modhri said simply. “Shussshorim developed her vile habits in response to those of my kind. It's possible that we were called here to begin the process of mending that terrible mistake.”

There was a clacking of clawlike hooves on iron-hard ice, and they turned to see a pair of Warriors approaching from a side tunnel, and after a moment, they realized that these weren't the sons of the Talssenemai. They were sleeker, slightly larger, possessed more of the greenish glowing insectoids, and had a smaller, secondary set of antennae in addition to the main array. Something about the way that they moved suggested greater speed and agility as well, and the team began to realize just how outdated the _Night Terror_ actually was. The two Hoshinthra halted a polite distance away, and dipped their bony heads in something like a greeting.

“ _You are welcomed to this place,”_ one of them said in a resonant whisper. _“We will escort you to the Cavern of the Mystics. Come.”_

Hunk gulped and stared around in alarm as the two aliens took up positions on either side of the group. “Whoa. Super Deluxe Turbo Doom Moose,” he muttered unhappily. “Did any of you just wet your armor? I think I might have wet my armor a little.”

“Thanks for sharing, Hunk,” Lance sighed, although he felt slightly damp around the nether regions, too.

The journey was fairly short, thankfully; Shiro's own armor was still roomier than he was used to, and the effort of maintaining his cool was difficult. The long, blue-lit ice tunnel that the two Warriors were leading them down eventually opened up into another cavern, smaller than the first but no less beautiful. In this room, water cascaded down from the far wall over a series of broad terraces into deep clear pools that seemed to go down forever. Some sort of ice-world version of lotus plants and waterlilies spread crystal leaves over and above the water's surface, and flowers like diamonds in bloom jingled gently in the shallows. The room was lit softly by a twining vine that clung to the forest of ice stalactites that hung from the ceiling, dangling clusters of what might have been fruit that glowed with pale light. Among the pools was a perfectly circular platform of glass-clear ice, onto which the Paladins, Coran, and the Galra were ushered, and then the Warriors took their leave; once again, the team found themselves standing alone in what appeared to be an empty room.

“There's nobody here,” Pidge said nervously.

Lizenne sighed. “Oh, they're here, all right. They pulled this trick on me last time. Look for shapes, not colors or movements. You, over by that ice pillar, I can see you.”

A patch of shadow on the ice pillar suddenly turned its head, antennae flaring out and fanged jaw clacking. _“You have learned, curious one,”_ it hissed, stepping out of hiding.

The team drew together instinctively as Hoshinthra appeared seemingly out of nowhere all around them. The Mystics were indeed smaller than the Warriors and built more like antelope than like moose, with prismlike scales that picked up light and shadow with equal facility. The skulls were higher-browed, with great flaring rows of glittering black antennae that made them look as though they were wearing Native American war bonnets, and their symbiotic insect things glowed a deep blue, rather than green. Slight and delicate they might have seemed when compared to their Warrior kin, these were still capable of fighting, and were probably even more deadly than the Warriors were.

“With such teachers as I have had, how can I not have learned?” Lizenne said with admirable outward calm. “I am sure that we gave each other much to consider when last we met.”

“ _Yes,”_ one of the other Mystics said neutrally. _“It is why you are here.”_

“ _We have observed the recent events through the Warleader Shussshorim, even as she observes through her sons,”_ another Mystic murmured hollowly, _“And what she has perceived has been... remarkable.”_

“ _We would perceive the source of this strangeness,”_ a fourth said, displaying long teeth. _“Stand quiet, and allow this. We will have questions.”_

They shifted uneasily, but the Paladins had heard that injunction before. _Stand quiet._ How many times had Lizenne used those same words in her aetheric sessions, to get them to relax and calm their minds? Too many to ignore, and the habits they'd built up eased them a little now, and they were able to weather what came next without dissolving into panic. There was nothing threatening about it, really, or not outwardly. The Mystics simply stood there, still and silent, antennae flared out to their fullest extent, but something about those eyeless skulls and watchful sense organs was incredibly eerie. All of them felt as though they were being examined inside and out, every detail examined and every secret laid bare. Shiro had to grind his teeth and force himself to stand still. He had done this before only a handful of days ago, when he had first met the Talssenemai, and the old Warleader hadn't been anything like as subtle or incisive as the Mystics. Even his inmost thoughts seemed to be an open book for these creatures, and that was confirmed when one of them canted its antennae at Lance and said in unmistakable bafflement, _“Sauce of intoxicating distilled beverage, to be applied to one's teammates as a sign of affectionate breeding imperative?”_

Hunk dissolved into a burst of strangled chortles, and the others grinned and relaxed as the tension broke. Lance drew himself up proudly. “You betcha. I don't know what you guys get up to on Saturday nights, but we, at least, know how to have some fun.”

“ _What is this... 'fun'?”_ another Mystic asked.

“Oh, dear,” Zaianne sighed, rolling her eyes heavenward. “Actions taken for no other reason than for personal or group pleasure. Generally viewed as something that most people don't get enough of. Any other questions?”

The Mystic hissed.  _“What is your name?”_

“Zaianne Ephaia Kzerok'Yad,” Zaianne replied promptly, “or I was, before my Lineage declared me nonexistent. I took the surname of my man for a time, as the customs of his world dictated; he has died, and I will not disturb his spirit by speaking it, according to the customs of mine.”

The Mystic grunted, and canted its antennae at Allura. _“What is your quest?”_

Allura blinked at the creature. “To stop Zarkon and Haggar, and to return peace and freedom to the universe.”

The Mystic then turned to Coran, who waggled a finger at it before it could speak. “Trying out that 'fun' thing, are you? If your next question involves coconuts or swallows, I shan't deign to answer.”

The Mystic didn't react to his accusation. _“You are not wholly truthful when reminiscing. Why?”_

“Knew it,” Keith muttered to Pidge, who giggled.

It was just as Lizenne had described earlier. The questions they were asked were seemingly unimportant, even nonsensical at times, but there were a sprinkling of queries among the trivia that cut a little close to the bone.

Of Allura, they asked, _“The Galra destroyed your homeworld and your kingdom, their Emperor killed your father and reduced your people to a small fraction of their previous numbers. You do not wish to do the same to them?”_

Allura glanced at her adoptive aunts and uncle, who had become dearer to her than she would have thought possible not so long ago. “No. At first, perhaps, and I still wish to see Zarkon and Haggar permanently out of the picture, but I cannot carry that same grudge against their entire people. In this rare case, the responsibility for the misfortunes of many may be laid upon comparatively very few individuals.”

The Mystic shifted slightly and turned to Modhri with a query involving the spices used in a certain traditional snack food; when he had answered that, another deerlike alien canted its antennae at Keith and asked, _“What emotions embrace you, when you join powers with your teammates?”_

Keith jerked in surprise. “Me? Uh. It feels... It feels good. Like we're all part of something greater. It's _right_ when we do that, but it's hard work.”

The Hoshinthra cocked its long head interestedly at him. _“You have no desire to take strength from others, to prolong and intensify that feeling?”_

Keith scowled at the Mystic. “Are you nuts? We've been warned against that sort of thing, and we've seen what the ones who do turn into. No thanks.”

That answer was also taken in stride, and the next query was directed at Lance, who was asked to describe the purpose of trousers in Human society. The next loaded question was directed at Pidge. _“You have great talent with machines, even awakening them to full life. Will you take that further, and awaken the creations of your enemies, to aid you in conquering them?”_

Pidge blinked, recalling her previous work. “I... I don't think so,” she said reluctantly. “It sounds really cool, but it's got some bad possibilities. What am I going to do with whole armies and navies of living machines after the war's over? They were built to fight, that's all they know how to do, and a lot of them probably wouldn't like the idea of retirement. Jasca and Clarence are all right, and so is Osric and the Castle and Chimera—Jasca's awesome at running communications networks and can nuke a hacker with the best of them, and when he isn't fighting, Clarence is an orbital defender and a part-time dojo. Osric used to be a trade ship and can be one again, no problem. Chimera's a science ship, and the Castle's... well, he's a castle. A warship or an army of Sentries... no. As much as some of the Fleet Captains might like the idea, I'm not going to wake those things up.” Pidge shivered and remembered the empty shell of the little drone that still graced her worktable in memoriam. “And it hurts too much to lose them.”

The Mystic chuffed quietly and then asked Shiro why giant reptiles were important to his people. There were a few more little questions, and then Zaianne caught a big one. _“Your Order seeks to topple the Empire, and to disrupt a longstanding way of life for billions of your people. This will cause much suffering and many deaths. You participate willingly in this?”_

“I do,” Zaianne replied firmly. “If left unchecked, the Empire will devour all other forms of life. Living worlds are not infinite in number, and once it has come to the end of the supply, it will devour itself, leaving nothing. It must be stopped, and as soon as possible, and our culture must change and adapt in order to coexist with its neighbors. We did so, once, long ago. We can do it again, and are even now working out how to keep the suffering and death to a minimum.”

That seemed to satisfy the Mystic, and it turned to Allura for a description of a dance that was popular just before Altea was destroyed. Lizenne had to explain how to make a tambok-fang knife and Coran had to describe the tailoring of dragon-scale jerkins before Hunk caught the next big one.

“ _You seek to befriend all who come near you, even those who have tried to kill you in the past. Why is this?”_

Hunk blinked. “Because there isn't any point in making enemies, or keeping them. Everyone deserves a chance, guys. Sometimes two or three. If you can't make friends, you're going to be lonely, and you're going to miss out on a lot of good things. Also, fighting gets boring after a while, and it busts up too much stuff. It's like peeling potatoes. Yeah, some of them will have bad spots, but you can't just toss the whole spud for a couple of those. You pare those bad spots out and keep going, and make something that'll make everybody happy. Cuts down on waste, too. Grandma used to smack me if she caught me wasting stuff, and the lesson kind of stuck.”

The Mystic's head bobbed slightly, almost imperceptibly, but it was almost certainly in approval. It turned to Keith and asked him to describe one of his sword techniques, and then to Pidge for a description of peanut butter, and Lance for a comparison on the relative merits of real leather and synthetic. Modhri caught the next big one.

“ _You are unlike any person of your kind that we have perceived before. Explain this difference.”_

Modhri had to think about that for a long moment, and then bestowed that extra-special sweet smile upon them; it was like a warm blanket on a cold day, and the group couldn't help but feel themselves being drawn to it. “I am very fortunate,” he replied calmly, “in that I am married. The Empire's military is comprised of unmated men and a few women who are not yet ready to choose a man, for no woman will start a family in unsafe conditions. We undergo profound emotional changes when we take a mate, and to love and support her and the family becomes sovereign over all other things. Women, alas, are rare—perhaps one female per ten males, although we have found that our blood may combine gracefully with that of these Humans. Perhaps our kind may find some peace with theirs, in time.”

That seemed to fascinate the Mystics for a moment, and they flared their antennae at him. _“We perceive this. It is the work of an Elder Race, and is deliberate. Why, we may not comprehend at this time. It is worth meditating upon.”_ There was a general rippling of sense organs, and then they turned to Coran for a description of one of Alfor's heroic exploits.

It was Lance who caught the next big one, after Hunk had dictated very sternly the proper mix of vegetables in a truly traditional kimchi. _“Should your campaign be successful and your enemies be destroyed, will you lay down your bayard and go home?”_

Lance opened his mouth to reply, stopped, and his face pinched in pain. “I don't think that I'll be able to. Oh, I'll visit, all right. I still want that month-long ice-cream beach party, and I will get it even if I have to bend the whole universe over my knee and spank it. I really mean that, guys. I just don't think that I'm going to be allowed to stop. None of us will. Not until things have settled out, and that could take decades. Centuries. Human history has lots of examples of what happens after a big civilization goes to pieces, and if we want to keep the worst of that from happening, we're going to have to stay with the Lions. I'm not going to let anyone die, just because I'm homesick.”

The Mystic vented a soft snort and canted its antennae at Shiro. _“And will you seek extra centuries to finish that work in?”_

Shiro gave it a long, stern look. “The Warleader has already asked me that.”

“ _The Warleader's perceptive ability is limited. Our ability is less so, and you have received gifts since you and she had spoken. Answer the question.”_

“Then, no. I will do what I can in the time that I've got, and then pass it on to whoever the Lion chooses for the duty. I will not become what I fight against. Not then. Not now. Not ever.”

The Mystics were silent for a long moment, and then Coran found himself at the center of their attention. _“You have served for two generations, and that faithfully. Do you not seek glory for yourself?”_

“Not especially,” Coran admitted. “Oh, I shan't be adverse to picking up whatever bit of glory might come my way, but quite frankly, I'm just not up to the kind of heroics that the Paladins get up to. Never was, though I've tried. I'll give them all the help that I can, when and as it becomes necessary, no doubt of that, but I'll leave fighting the Robeasts to those who are built for it.”

One of the Mystics pawed at the ice a couple of times and thrust its head aggressively at Lizenne. _“Why?”_ it demanded.

She smiled at the Mystic, and that smile was as sharp as its teeth. “Because.”

It danced in place a little in agitation, hooves clacking on the ice; this particular individual had been aggressive in its questioning, and had greeted the answers with suspicion. _“The spear. These people. Your choices. Why?”_

“Why everything? Why anything? Why here? Why now?” Lizenne lifted her arms up and out, an expansive gesture that included the cosmos in its entirety. “Because I could have been a good girl and lived a short and unhappy life. Because I could have sat idly by as the universe dissolved into chaos and nothingness around me. Because I might have forgotten and abandoned the man who is the love of my life to a vile demise, missed completely the opportunity to choose to join a unique family, denied myself the right to learn something worthwhile, and turned down the opportunity to complete a task that was begun before the written word was invented. I have done as I have done and will continue to do what I am doing for the love of my pack, for the Pack Is As One, and I _will not_ deny myself a moment of it! Not when we stand to do what no one else could even dream of doing in ten thousand years. Because I am wild, and arrogant, and selfish, but I am willing to share, and to use those traits in defense of what I love.”

The Mystic snorted and subsided, lowering its head as its nearest neighbor clacked its jaws for their attention.

“ _No more questions need be asked; the decision has been reached. Know that we had foreseen a time in which the Empire would show a weakness, and that its downfall would be sought. It was our response to that weakness that was debatable. That we would take advantage of it was never in doubt; it was the manner by which we did so that depended upon circumstance. You all are the linchpin on which the decision hung.”_

“Us?” Keith asked. “Not Voltron?”

“ _You are Voltron. The mechanism is incidental.”_ The Mystic paused, antennae fluttering like feathers. _“Your Coalition will have our aid. We will not seek to exterminate the Galra, although we will have our share of those who destroy and oppress. We will give you a gift to prove our good faith in the matter. It will be presented to you when you return to your ships.”_

Shiro gave it a narrow look. “Will we need to give you one in turn?”

“ _A promise, only,”_ the Mystic returned his wary gaze, impossibly, with one of its own. _“Swear to us that we will be left to continue our studies in peace. That was all that we wished from the Empire, and they attempted to destroy us instead.”_

Shiro nodded slowly. “We'll do our best to make your preference widely known. After seeing your military in action, there will be people who will want that technology for themselves, and will try to steal it... or who will fear you and try to sabotage your work. We won't be able to stop them all, but we will try, and I'm willing to let you see to your own security. If we do this right, all inhabited worlds will have autonomy within their own boundaries. Having seen what little I already have... well, I don't want anyone else copying your tech, anyway.”

“ _Sufficient,”_ the Mystic murmured, and then its jaws parted in an odd approximation of a smile. _“Your concern for Shussshorim's wounding is appreciated. She will return to duty in good time, and will have the honor of carrying the war-banner for her descendants.”_

Shiro blinked in surprise. “Her descendants?”

“ _She alone survived the destruction of the Homeworld's fleets, and has shown her superiority in her long survival since that disaster. The Scientists have acquired vast and valuable amounts of data by studying her, and the subsequent generations of Warleaders and Warriors have been based upon her gene-file. We look forward to testing them in the wider universe.”_

Shiro swallowed hard, but nodded. “And we'll be glad of the help.”

“ _You will not be stinted.”_ The Mystic folded its antennae back along its neck and bowed its head politely. _“You are dismissed, and we thank you for the informative discussion.”_

The group bowed and murmured their own polite thanks, and it was with great relief that they followed the pair of Warriors back to the pod station.

“Wow, am I glad that that's over,” Lance muttered, his shoulders sagging. “Those guys are _intense.”_

“Very wise, very perceptive, but very predatory,” Zaianne sighed. “They can't all be Zen masters, Lance. Wisdom means very different things along the vegetarian-to-carnivore scale.”

Lizenne nodded. “On some of the worlds I have visited or researched, Enlightenment may be sought any number of ways. Some seek it through meditation, dancing, fine arts and crafts, or singing. Others seek it through more violent means. The problem is that every people and every philosophy is different; either all methods are valid, or none are.”

Hunk looked at her suspiciously. “What's yours?”

She chuckled. “A bit of meditation, a bit of moderation, and the occasional hunt to gratify my wild spirit. You do want that yulpadi stew at some point, don't you?”

“Yes,” Pidge said firmly, “but first I want a soak in the hot tub. It's pretty here, but it's freezing! I can barely feel my toes right now.”

There was a general rumble of concurrence from the rest of her team, and they piled into the transport pod without hesitation, and hurried to follow the space station's drone back toward their ships. They would have one more shock before they embarked, although they might have guessed what the Hoshinthra's parting gift would be. By the docking tubes stood another Warrior, this one belonging to the _Night Terror,_ with one hand holding one end of a cable. The other end was tied tightly around the wrists of a Galra soldier in battered armor. The man was trembling visibly, and one of the Warrior's glowing insect things was clinging to his throat, its tail wrapped around his neck and the stinger at the end buried in the fur over his carotid artery. Not much of his expression could be seen behind the visor of his helmet, but the clenched teeth and the shaky way his breath hissed out through them suggested that he had been living in his worst nightmares for some time.

“ _For you, by command of the Mystics,”_ the Warrior rasped tonelessly, handing Allura the cable, and turning its fanged head to hiss into its prisoner's ear. _“Be grateful, wretch. Had this group done poorly below, your hide would have hung in our halls and your flesh would have warmed our bellies before the day was out.”_

The soldier's only reply was a terrified whimper.

“Thank you,” Allura said diplomatically, taking the cable and frowning at the insectoid as it unwound itself from the prisoner's throat. “What are those things, anyway?”

The Warrior backed a step away, the glowing insectoid hovering before it on glassy dragonfly wings. _“It is one of my_ k'sshass-spak-nilza. _A symbiotic life form that I direct, the better to reach prey in places too small for me. The venom may silence, stupefy, paralyze, or kill. It is most useful.”_

“So I see,” Allura replied, tugging gently on the cable. “I thank you, your mother, and the Mystics for this gift, and congratulate you on the honor they have granted the Talssenemai.”

The Warrior, whose posture had been communicating sullenness for having to give up its dinner, lifted its long bony head proudly and snapped its jaws in satisfaction. _“Yes. It is good that Mother will lead the way. It is her right. Go bravely, Paladins, and flush out much prey for us.”_

The Hoshinthra turned and trotted away, its symbiotic creature buzzing in to take up its accustomed place on its left flank. “Great,” Keith muttered, “so, what are we supposed to do with this guy?”

Allura sighed and turned to face the others. “We'll keep him for the time being, at least until we meet up with the Fleet again. Lizenne, will you be willing to take him for now? The medipods in the infirmary are good, but you're the authority on your people's physical health around here.”

“Of course, dear,” Lizenne said calmly, accepting the cable from her. “It'll also allow me to get a sample, however degraded, of Hoshinthra venom for study. Hunk, have you had time to build an antidote machine yet? We may need it in the future if some of Shussshorim's grandchildren get carried away.”

Hunk gave her a thumbs-up. “Doc gave me a blueprint, and I've been tweaking it a little. I'll put together a prototype... brrr! After a hot soak. Maybe one for him, too. Come on, guys, Pidge isn't the only one who's got numb toes, and this poor guy looks mostly frozen.”

“Inside and out,” Lizenne agreed. “I'll bring him over when he's recovered enough to talk, and hopefully he's heard of our habit of sending ordinary soldiers home unharmed.”

 

With that, they boarded their respective ships, and the station was kind enough to release them from its grasp, and even to transmit to them a set of coordinates that would get them out of this peculiarly silent solar system intact. Shiro and the rest of the team headed below to get some snacks and the hot tub ready while Allura and the others moved the ships out to where they could make a clean exit. It was with great relief that they entered the wormhole that Allura opened for them, even though it let them out in a region of space that they didn't recognize.

“Where are we?” Allura asked, staring at constellations that she'd never seen before.

“Not sure, Princess,” Coran said, calling up starcharts that now worked. “We're pretty far out beyond the Empire's fringes—and the territories that we knew about ten thousand years ago. I'm having a hard time finding reference points.”

“There,” Zaianne said, pointing at a particular cluster of small stars just barely visible amidst a large nebula, “I know that one. It's dangerous, but it'll lead us back into known space.”

“Dangerous?” Allura asked. “How so?”

Zaianne frowned as Coran brought the old star cluster into focus. “The Order does a bit of exploration beyond the Empire's borders, the better to find resources and hiding places if our extant ones fail. That stellar cluster has been mapped out as an escape route, and I've even used it once or twice.”

“Sounds encouraging,” Coran observed.

She shook her head. “Not all that encouraging. It's an emergency route only, and for when you've got a lot of unwelcome pursuit. You have to know the precise path, or the gravitational anomalies will tear your ship apart; even then, it's risky. We can't just leapfrog over it, either; that entire region affects hyperspatial travel adversely if a ship takes too long a jump. From the angle that we're approaching, even if we make it through intact, it will lead us right out into Gantarash territory.” She smiled at their exclamations of disgust. “Like I said, it's for emergencies. I know the route well, and if we're quick, we can get out and away before the Gantars even know that we're there.”

“Even so, I would rather not,” Allura said, gazing worriedly at those ominous points of reddish light. “Are there any better places?”

“No. Not this far out.” Zaianne waved a hand at the nebula, a huge and peculiar formation of gas and dust that stretched across half of the screen on either side of the star cluster. “Do you see that long streak of matter there, that looks like a wall of thunderclouds? Beyond that is the Empire, and those clouds might as well be a wall in truth; something very strange happened in there billions of years ago, and it has left that whole region scattered with anomalies and mysteries that exploratory fleets tend not to come back from. Believe it or not, the star cluster is the safest path through that.”

Coran hummed thoughtfully. “Y'know... if this side of that wall is Hoshinthra territory, that might explain some of those disappearances.”

She nodded. “Very possible, but they are not the only hazards out here. Lizenne, did you come out this far when you visited them the first time?”

“ _Lizenne's busy with our guest at the moment,”_ Modhri's voice came through the comms. _“His captors were not kind to him. From what she told me of her early adventures, the colony she visited was somewhere near Briblinroth, out by the Roils of Cirrivinar-Glinva. We are nowhere near that galaxy right now. We're off of the charts entirely, as a matter of fact, and I haven't the faintest idea of where we are.”_

“Lovely,” Allura sighed, and turned to her copilot. “I suppose that we don't have much choice but to take that hard road. Will you want to navigate, Zaianne?”

“Yes, and thank you,” Zaianne replied. “Once we're there, we'll have to traverse the cluster in a series of short and very carefully-calculated jumps—some of those anomalies move around quite a lot. It may take most of the day to get around them, so go and refresh yourself... oh, and ask Hunk to bring us up some sandwiches. Furry or no, trying to stay warm on that planet took a lot of energy. I'm starving, and Coran is starting to look positively delicious.”

Allura giggled, and trotted off to do as her copilot had asked.

She managed to get the promised sandwiches—quite a nice pile of them, too—up to the bridge in good time, had a fine lunch with her team, a heavenly hot bath, and even a nap before feeling obligated to return to the Castle's helm. By the time she arrived, Zaianne had also been sent to wash and sleep by Coran; they were at a moderately safe spot at the moment, waiting for an odd little twist in the fabric of space and time to get out of the way before they could travel any further, and so had some extra time for their own comforts. Allura stared at the long, twisting wrinkle of the anomaly as it snaked its way around a rather peculiarly-shaped planet, brilliant gold and distorting the view of the stars into eyewateringly-bright whorls of glitter around it.

“Pretty, isn't it?” Coran said, nibbling the last of the sandwiches. “It'll turn the whole Castle and everything in it inside out if we get too close, but it's nice to look at. It'll be another three vargas or so until it's passed off.”

“It's breathtaking,” Allura said, admiring the shimmer. “It reminds me of the jewelry set that Aunt Ambelline wore to the last big birthday party that Father had, remember that? Rings, necklace, earrings, hairpins, a tiara, and bracelets, all set with strobe-gems from Lassimore. She had them sewn all over her gown, too.”

Coran chuckled. “Oh, yes. Grand old lady, fancied herself to be a trendsetter. My, how she sparkled that night! The dancing was certainly exceptional that evening, with half the dancers disoriented from the glare, and the rest suffering from temporary blindness. All except the Count of Hilenture, who'd brought his sunglasses along just in case, and they danced the night away. I believe they were married not long afterward, since the dear woman liked a man who could plan ahead. Great times.”

Allura sobered a little, feeling the loss of home and family sharply in her heart. She shook it off and asked, “Has there been any word from the _Chimera?”_

“Not as yet,” Coran replied. “They held it together well enough during our meeting, but it was no easier on them than the rest of us. Probably harder, given the Hoshinthra's opinion of Galra. Let's check up, shall we? _Chimera,_ a status report, if you would?”

“ _I'm right here, Coran,”_ Lizenne responded, _“It's Modhri's turn to nap. We're fine and our ship is holding well, although this star cluster is bizarre. The dragons have been glued to the windows in the lounge for hours, watching as the cosmic impossibilities waft by like glitterflies on the breeze.”_

“They're not alone,” Allura said, glancing up at the gleaming anomaly. “How is our guest?”

Lizenne sighed.  _“Sleeping in a healpod. Despite the protection afforded to him by his armor, he took quite a bit of damage. Two cracked ribs, arm broken in three places, sprained wrist, dislocated shoulder, numerous bruises and contusions, a few pulled muscles, a mild concussion, hypothermia, shock, a circulatory system full of some of the strangest chemicals that I have ever encountered, and enough nightmare fuel for a whole theater's worth of horror-movie addicts. Galra are predators, Allura, and a predator's greatest fear is becoming prey for a bigger one.”_

“He'll be nervous coming out of that, to say the least,” Coran observed.

“ _Very likely, and having fallen into the hands of the enemies of the Empire won't help. We'll take it slow, and hope that he's a decent sort at heart.”_ Lizenne snorted. _“Or if he isn't, that he'll be willing to learn.”_

Allura hummed thoughtfully at that, remembering Torozan and Tamzet. “Yes, we have been lucky thus far, haven't we? Run him past the dragons first, I suppose. Their judgment is usually sound.”

Lizenne humphed. _“Assuming that I can get them out of the lounge. I'll keep you updated, when and as things happen. Coran, you look like an aircar wreck. Get the mice to mind your post and go and have a bath and a nap.”_

Coran smiled, tugging at his mustache. “Now, now, it's not that bad. A hovercycle wreck, perhaps, assuming that it crashed into a street-vendor's booth, with parts of the scene screaming accusations and calumnies at the other parts, but nobody seriously hurt. Nonetheless, Sister Dearest, I shall do as you command. Good day.”

Allura giggled at Lizenne's lifted eyebrow as her old friend ambled out of the room. “Did your brothers act like that, too?”

“ _Before I came into my powers, yes. Afterward, they soon learned better.”_ She smiled nostalgically. _“I don't mind. It's a little like being home again, only better, because I'm here.”_

Allura cocked a curious look at her adoptive aunt, hardly noticing the little group of mice that scampered in and took up their positions on the console's control board. “You've said that your home life was not a happy one. Was it truly that bad?”

Lizenne's expression turned grim, with an undercurrent of loss that Allura had never seen before.  _“Like you, I was born to wealth and privilege. Unlike you, I enjoyed very little of it. Ghurap'Han is a very High House, and traditionally a very politically active one. Each child of the House is a tool of the House, to be used by the House to promote, preserve, and enhance its greatness. If our Matriarchs aren't ruthless to begin with, they soon become so, and the temperament of the Matriarch affects the entire Family's way of thinking. My Lineage is heavily invested in the Empire's power, and is influenced by those who administer it. I was raised in the full knowledge that I would be required to serve my House when I came of age, and serve it well and obediently. My siblings and cousins accepted that. I would not. This caused quite a lot of friction.”_

“So you've said,” Allura mused. “Didn't you have any support?”

“ _Some,”_ Lizenne sighed. _“A few of my cousins and lesser-ranked uncles, who admired my strength of will. My father, before he died, did his best to enable my independence, but Mother and her sisters frequently overrode him. He was a fine man, but not a strong one, and he tended to back away when the ladies showed their teeth. My Aunt Korial was a great help. She had married a man from a more congenial House, and liked their attitudes better. She disagreed with many of the Ghurap'Han traditions and rules, to the point of openly encouraging the attachment that was at that time forming between Modhri and me. She also was the one who gave me the_ Chimera's Clutch, _my first ship, because she knew damned well what would happen if I stayed at home. Beyond that, no one. I was a difficult daughter with little apparent magic, suitable only for forming an alliance-by-marriage with some other House's near-useless inbred twit. My value increased somewhat not long before I left, when Mother discovered that my full aetheric strength was merely late in manifesting, rather than minimal as she'd thought, which was why she went to the expense of hiring bounty hunters to bring me home.”_

Allura scowled. “I still think that was uncalled-for. Couldn't she have just gone to the police?”

Lizenne gave her a sour smile. _“No. To the High Houses, the Police are like herdsmen, and are used to keep the commons in line. The Houses see to their own affairs, which allows them to use methods that would land a lowborn person in a labor camp for much of their adult life. The higher you rank, the less the Law matters—so long as you stay out of the Emperor's business. Only then does the Law become absolute.”_

Allura nodded slowly, remembering the history classes that she had sat through in her childhood. “That was fairly common in the early history of Altea. It took a long time to work out the best systems of checks and balances, and to reorganize our culture to better promote peace and prosperity for all. More than three thousand years, by the best estimates of the time, and we were still fine-tuning it when... when it all came to an end.”

“ _What a waste,”_ Lizenne grumbled, and then shrugged. _“If we are fortunate, that project is still underway, or at least is remembered on Quolothis. Perhaps you will be able to pick up where Alfor left off.”_

“Perhaps,” Allura said very softly, watching the line of golden glitter slide past the screens. “If we are very lucky indeed.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally this is where I remind everyone that comments and kudos are the stuff of legends that we constantly stagger around like drunken barbarians on a quest for, but today we've got something a little different for you all.
> 
> POLL TIME!!!
> 
> In a future chapter, the Paladins will be attending a formal event, and Shiro will be well enough to come with. This raises a question that Spanch and I have been unable to reach an agreement on, even after hours of debate, fifteen thumb wars, two pie-eating contests (Spanch thinks those were draws, but I entered food coma too fast to remember), six cage match pillow fights, and a coin flip that ended with the coin getting stolen by the cat. So we're turning to you guys before we end up getting taken away by the nice men in white coats.
> 
> The Paladins will be going to a formal event on a planet whose people are in good standing with the Galra Empire, so they need to be cautious and come armed. Shiro will be well enough to attend, and in fact will be required to do so. (Not that he'd stay away, the self-sacrificing responsibility junkie that he is...) WHO TAKES THE BLACK BAYARD, ALLURA OR SHIRO? Let us know your thoughts on the matter!
> 
> Thank you!


	25. More Surprises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all. Sorry this chapter is late, but Real Life decided to stomp us into the ground with the loss of another of our cats. More to the point, another of the cats that Spanch and our parents had been really attached to. Sterling was never terribly fond of me, but he still somehow made me love him, the stinker, so I'm sad too, but at least somewhat functional. Still, cats are family in our household and people in their own right, so the mourning is real.
> 
> On a lighter note, a big thanks to everyone who took the time to answer our poll last chapter. A lot of you brought up some good points that we will keep in mind. Also, there were several of you who commented that you wanted to see what the bayard would look like in Shiro's hands. Well, just so happens that THIS is your chapter for that. Enjoy!

 

Chapter 25: More Surprises

 

Coran and Zaianne returned to the bridge a few hours later; the mice took a break, but Allura stayed on for the company, for listening to her adoptive aunts and her faithful family retainer bounce war stories off of each other was too much fun to miss out on. Zaianne was able to make another jump now that the local space was stable enough, but they got held up for a time at the next stop. Not by an anomaly, but by something extremely large, and from the look of it, might have been related to the Weblums. The creature was more centipede-like than caterpillar-like, its body plated with what looked like miles-long shards of red mirror, and the forward third of its underside was lined with the most incredible selection of grappling-hook graspers that any of them had ever seen. The mandibles were, if anything, even more diverse and menacing, and a vast hook tipped the end of the long, segmented tail. Whatever it was, it made Zaianne extremely tense until it executed an awesome U-turn and wandered off to inspect a nearby red dwarf star for... for whatever it might have found interesting.

“The Order has a name for those,” Zaianne said in a low voice, her eyes never leaving the thing as it moved away. _“Karkumn'naknak,_ which means 'devourer of giants'. They eat Weblums and other large space-roving beasts. They'll go after starships as well, if the ships are big enough. I was shown a vid, once, of one of those taking apart an Imperial dreadnought. I had nightmares for a week.”

Needless to say, they did not linger. The next two jumps went without incident, but the third had to be postponed. Space had gone... spotty, and they were right in the middle of it. “Dimensional portals,” Zaianne informed them. “I saw this phenomenon the last time I came through here. They're stationary within their matrix and they'll close back up after a while, but we don't dare perturb them any more than we have already.”

“ _We're aware,”_ Modhri replied from the _Chimera._ _“Lizenne says that the dragons are chanting some sort of protective incantation right now. Very advanced stuff, she says, and can't understand a word of it.”_

“Whatever keeps us in our own proper time and space,” Coran said darkly and shut the Castle's engines down. “Alfor and his team got stuck in one of those, once. Not me, thankfully, he'd sent me to Gropp's Diner on Blupport Station to get everyone a bucket or three of hronk-fried woppits, and one of those things popped up and swallowed the Castle, just like that! They were only gone for a few minutes—on our side of things at least—but they insisted that on their side, they'd been stuck there for weeks, and in difficult conditions. Trigel went straight to her room and didn't come out for days, I know that. Not before eating more than her fair share of woppits, of course, they were a particular favorite of hers, but nobody was willing to argue with her at that time.”

Whether or not the dragons had anything to do with it, the portals closed up and vanished about seventeen minutes later, and they were able to move on. Three more jumps passed without incident, but the final one stopped them cold. Beyond a certain point in front of them, there was nothing. Not just empty space, but no space at all. The entire universe seemed to fuzz out a few light-minutes away, leaving a colorless blank that sucked at their eyeballs and gave them headaches, sapping their energy and making them feel chilled, weak and depressed. That wasn't all; the Castle and the _Chimera_ didn't like it either, and warning signals began to glow and buzz on the screens. With a curse, Zaianne turned the Castle around and headed, not for the nearest star, but for a larger solar orb some distance away. The old red giant was well on its way to shrinking down into a white dwarf, but it still produced enough heat and light to revive their spirits somewhat, and the danger alarms died down once they were in a stable orbit.

“What was that?” Allura asked in a shaking voice. “Coran, have you ever encountered such a thing?”

“No,” Coran said, sounding no less shaken, “and I'm glad of that.”

Zaianne wiped sweat from her brow and leaned on the pilot's posts, venting a long quivering breath. “Shadow of Oblivion. Something like an aetheric black hole, if that sort of thing is possible. I'm not taking up that heading again until that thing has passed off, which might take days. Any opinions, Lizenne?”

“ _The dragons are in full agreement with you,”_ Lizenne replied tensely from the _Chimera. “As am I. They aren't unknown to the Exploration fleets, although they are very rare. I stumbled across reports of them while doing historical research some years ago. They seem to occur periodically, but at extremely long intervals, and only where there has been a massive outpouring of aetheric power. Hmph. At some point when I am much older and more experienced, I might—very, very carefully—see if I can find out more about what happened in this region. The traces are unbelievably ancient, but there are hints that there was a mage-war here, and on a scale that is impossible by today's standards. In the meantime, I am going to have to beg a favor from you, Allura.”_

“What do you need?” Allura asked curiously.

“ _Something about that anomaly has thrown certain of my ship's systems into chaos, including the infirmary. Our guest is stable, but the medipod is refusing to complete the healing cycle. Are your medical systems still working?”_

Coran tapped a few controls, running a diagnostic on the Castle's secondary systems. “Yes, they seem to be fine. Grandfather was a master shipbuilder, and he knew a thing or three about security measures for aetheric systems. He'd also spent enough time in one infirmary or another to really appreciate a properly-functional pod.”

“ _Excellent. I will trade you one rather dubious pact-gift for a couple of bored teenagers, if you'll allow it; Modhri could really use Pidge and Hunk right now.”_

Allura giggled. “Of course.”

 

When Allura alerted her team to what was going on, they'd reported back that they'd felt the chill of the anomaly pass through them, too, and that Pidge and Hunk had already checked the Castle for distress. Coran hadn't been wrong about his grandfather's prowess, thankfully, and they were quite willing to head over to help the _Chimera,_ whose builders hadn't been quite so talented. The conditions for their visit, however, inspired the team to some small foolery—when Lance suggested that they treat it as a dry run for a real exchange of prisoners, they were just bored enough to humor him.

They all knew how this sort of thing was supposed to go: both sides would stand in full view of each other, looking either noble and stern or burly and evil. The leaders of each group would exchange stiff little platitudes while their hench-persons would trade glares-of-death with optional crude gestures, and the prisoners would act according to their own natures. Or just stand there looking dispirited, depending on how badly they'd been treated. That was the standard for the three races... well, no, four... oh, all right, _five_ races represented onboard both ships (the dragons and the mice had wanted in on the fun, too), although Coran was full of tales of the various other methods that he'd seen over his long and checkered career. While Hunk had been all in favor of the one that had involved the ceremonial drummers and the spit-roasted rolph-beast, Allura had refused to let him build a firepit in the docking annex, and so he got even by making the mice tiny little suits of Villainous costume armor from the spare junk in the lab. That, of course, set the tone for Team Castle despite much eye-rolling on Shiro's part, but his teammates were having so much fun that he hated to stop them, and so accepted the hastily-made cape, false mustache, and spiky helmet that Lance produced without complaint. So had Zaianne, and the sight of her with a mustache that rivaled Coran's for ferocity kept sending everyone into fits of giggles.

Team Chimera had responded in kind, for all that their party was smaller. Lizenne had managed to produce a pair of ceremonial shawls and headdresses of what looked to be supersized costume chainmail with long fringes of glittering glass beads for the dragons, versions of those in knitted wool for herself and Modhri, and had brought her spear along for good measure. Modhri was no less well-armed, bearing a bandolier of tambok-fang knives that would have driven Nasty into fits of envy and an air of grave importance that held up for a whole three seconds when he saw the motley, bewhiskered, and spiky crowd of Team Castle. His laughter was infectious, and they had to let the mice and the dragons do the talking. Of course, listening to the gronking, squeaking conversation, very serious though it was, to say nothing of the sneering, spitting, making of dreadful faces, and amusing gestures of both parties of henchmen, often set them off again. It didn't help that Pidge and Hunk were playing the Damsels In Distress roles to the hilt; they clung together, eyes wide and dewy, hands clasped over hearts or one wrist laid against foreheads in displays of ladylike distress (expressions that suited Hunk rather well and Pidge not at all), and interjecting the occasional, breathless, falsetto whimper of, “Oh, whatever will become of us?”

It was just as well that the Galra soldier was lying unconscious in a hovercot, or he would have been terribly confused by all of this playacting.

The negotiations were concluded, despite the antics of the others, with something like dignity, and Pidge and Hunk scampered over to hug Lizenne and Modhri while Soluk pushed the hovercot and its passenger over to the other team. Coran caught it expertly, having had to do this sort of thing a few times before, and the Paladins crowded around to have a look at their new guest.

“Huh,” Lance said, taking off his helmet and false mustache. “Another of those fuzzy guys. Looks like he's got some scaly guy genes in him, though.”

Zaianne gave the sleeping man a considering look. “It's not uncommon. All of the Galra subtypes can interbreed successfully. Most of his ancestry came from the Homeworld, but here--” her fingers brushed a scattering of small, dark-blue scales along his cheekbones, broad jaw, and shoulders, then indicated the bony ridge that pushed through the fur over the crown of his skull. “These are the legacy of a Kedrekan forebear. We'll want to be a bit careful with him; hybrids of this sort can be surprisingly strong—Kedrekans are very popular among the Military recruiters for their toughness, and that often breeds true.”

“It's not just Galra, or wasn't, anyway,” Coran said, adjusting the angle of his spiky helmet, which he rather liked. “Back in the day, we used to encounter plenty of races that had instituted breeding programs for the benefit of their armies. All of them looking for the perfect soldier, the hardiest warriors, the greatest and grandest weapons-masters and heroic commanders. Often ignoring the consequences of that sort of thing, I'm afraid. It always seemed to surprise the civilian governments whenever those brawny lads decided that a change in administration was in order. Not that it was, generally, special-bred warrior types not usually being much good at civilian things, like minding the state of the infrastructure and seeing to maintaining an efficient waste management system. They were often completely useless at maintaining civil liberties, but that's military dictatorships for you. We'll probably want to give this fellow a security bracelet to make sure that he minds his manners.”

“That will have to wait,” Lizenne said firmly. “For now, we need to get him into a healpod. Ours were able to repair the worst of the physical damage before the system crumped, but the venom in his blood is proving to be tenacious. Those insect things were not designed to leave their victims alive for longer than it took to prepare them for dinner.”

“Ooh, yeah, poor guy,” Hunk said sympathetically. “One of my neighbors was bitten by a brown recluse spider once, and while they got the antivenin into her in time, it took weeks to heal up, and she was miserable the whole time. She almost lost a finger, too. Guys, you get him to the infirmary, all right? Pidge and I need to have a look at the _Chimera's_ systems. We'll catch up with you later.”

Lizenne smiled fondly at him before turning to the others. “Very good. Since neither I nor the dragons can help with that, would you like it if we stayed aboard here? Once we've got our man here situated, we might try a light training session. You carried your armor well down on the Hoshinthra colony, Shiro. Would you like to try a little armed combat?”

Shiro perked up a bit, as did the dragons. “I would, yes. I need to get used to fighting with a bayard instead of a battle-arm. It's as good a way to spend the time as any.”

“And better than some,” Keith said with a grin, pulling off his costume and piling it into Lance's arms. “Let's do it.”

 

A short time later, Shiro was admiring his new weapon. He had never actually been able to use it beyond triggering the burst of aetheric force that had catapulted him into the Mindscape. It had been long enough since then for Allura to get attached to it; he had seen the slight reluctance in her movements when she had placed the bayard in his hands. Shiro knew the feeling and could relate, but that didn't lessen the subtle pleasure he felt when the bayard reshaped itself over his right forearm, or make the Lion's presence in the back of his mind any less felt. In his hands, the bayard was a gauntlet-and-buckler arrangement, with a short sword extending out over the back of his hand that was very much like the battle-arm that he had grown used to, and it was with a warrior's joy that he faced off against Keith.

He was rusty, of course. His brain knew what to do, but he hadn't built up the muscle-memory yet, and he could tell that Keith was holding back. Part of him felt a little insulted by that, but his rational mind recognized the necessity for it. He simply was not ready for a full-strength match yet. It felt good, though, and he pushed himself as far as he could before his left leg buckled beneath him; Keith moved quickly and caught him before he could fall flat on his face.

“That's enough, you workaholic,” Lizenne told him firmly, helping the others move him onto a nearby bench and handing him a beverage packet. “Now give that thing back to Allura so that she can have a turn. All right, everyone, did you want to face me in single bouts, or as a group? I warn you, I will be using all of my skills either way, so pay attention!”

“Group battle,” Lance said sourly, eyeing the bone spear with deep suspicion. “Maybe that way we'll be able to land a hit on you.”

She laughed, spinning the lethal length of bone and ivory expertly around one hand. “Oh, come now, Zaianne manages it regularly. Don't just watch how I move. Feel it, even as you feel each other's movements, and use it to let you all flow together. Shiro, you will want to watch us with your inner sight. You might learn something interesting.”

Shiro nodded, sucking the last of the moisture out of the packet, and leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed. It came slowly to him at first, his ears hearing the scrape and stamp of boot-soles along with the sharper sounds of claws on the decking. Lizenne was barefoot as usual, and Shiro reflected that by now she must have calluses that could stop a bullet. He took a deep breath and relaxed, allowing himself to perceive the Lion-bond, and through it, his team. There they were, each one blazing in their signature colors around a wild, dancing figure of golden flame. He could see the spear on this side as well, a length of moonlight-colored shimmer and shadow as it jabbed, parried, and spun. Its power was quiescent at this time, as if aware that it was only playing. There was a flare of golden glitter, and it was with some amazement that he found himself able to see Lizenne teleporting herself through the aether. Not precisely into the Mindscape, he realized, but only just skimming the surface. Just enough to get around a very tiny portion of time and space, and he smiled when his team moved automatically to meet her when she exited back out into the physical plane. They moved together in a pattern that was almost a dance, flaring brightly in excitement. They flashed like fireworks when Lizenne hurled a long crackling bolt of mage-fire at them, which they blocked or dodged as well as they could. They countered with attacks of their own, forcing the Galra witch into a physical confrontation where they had the advantage. He heard her low chuckle when Allura pressed forward a little too hard, and the spear dipped, caught her behind the knees, and flipped her into the air head over heels. Lizenne teleported across the room before Allura hit the ground and fired a fusillade of bright needles at them. Keith and Lance blocked most of those with their shields, protecting Allura for long enough for her to get to her feet, and then they attacked as a group again. They were beautiful, Shiro thought, and felt deeply privileged to be a part of their team. And to have such unique instructors, he thought, watching as Lizenne sent Lance tumbling with an expert flip with the spear butt. It was a little strange, he mused, that he and Hunk had found her precisely when the team had needed her and Modhri the most, and in possession of the skills that would do the team the most good. Such things did happen, but the rational mind rebelled against such coincidences--

Shiro froze. In his mind's eye, he could see the shadows that the combatants cast across the Mindscape, like patches of cosmos or swaths of black silk scattered with gems. In that instant, the team had paused to catch their breaths and were circling the Galra witch, searching for any weakness. Lizenne was turning slowly to follow them, spear at the ready in one hand, a sizzling sphere of golden forces in the other, and a smile like a thunderbolt on her face. None of that mattered in this particular moment, for Shiro was not watching them anymore. Lizenne's shadow had opened a pair of fathomless, moon-colored eyes which were now locked on his own and were watching him with interest. It smiled, winked at him, and then was nothing more than an absence of light again.

Shiro started forward with a gasp, eyes flying open. Whatever that had been, the others hadn't seen it; Keith leaped forward with a fearsome yell and engaged Lizenne one-on-one until the spear butt cracked against his right hip, knocking him over. The others worked together to keep her from pressing her advantage until he could haul himself upright again, and the battle carried on without a pause. Shiro quivered. _What was that,_ he wondered, _and what did it mean?_ Another vision of some sort, or something else entirely? Whatever it had been, he thought as he got his heartbeat back under control, it hadn't felt threatening, and the smile he'd been given had been one of approval. _I'll ask her about it later,_ he thought, taking his helmet off. It felt heavier than usual, which might indeed mean that his peculiar talent had once again been active. Or he'd ask Lance's Toad Princess, if they ever got around to visiting her. Either way, he was not entirely sorry when Coran's voice interrupted them.

“ _Paladins, we're moving again,”_ the PA speaker crackled slightly, _“Pidge and Hunk are back, the_ Chimera _is working properly again, and that rather nasty anomaly has wandered off. Just thought that you might want to know.”_

“Thank... thank you... Coran,” Allura gasped out around huge, heaving breaths.

All of them were gasping from their exertions, including Lizenne; beads of sweat glinted in her fur like tiny crystals, and there was a distinct tang of spices and german shepherd on the air. She puffed an amused breath and cast a glance of wry humor in the Princess's direction. “For the information... or for the interruption? Hah. Good fight, children. I'd say it was a draw.”

Lance grunted, wiping sweat out of his eyes. _“Quiznek._ If Shiro was fighting with us, we'd have flattened you.”

“Perhaps,” she replied lightly, leaning on the spear. “He's making progress, and I will be eager to challenge him when he is at full strength. For now, however, we might as well rest. Ugh. And get clean.”

Keith flicked a finger at the far end of the room. “There's a shower room back there, both 'freshers and actual water spigots. I found it a while ago, when I couldn't sleep one night. There are even real towels.”

Allura brightened up. “You're right. I forgot about it completely, since I rarely used it. My room has a private bath, you see, so I didn't have to worry about someone stealing my favorite soaps.”

“Or peeking at the Royal Personage,” Keith said with a sharp look in Lance's direction.

Shiro puffed an amused breath at the puzzled look that Allura gave them. “We had a few cultures back home where if someone saw a lady naked, especially a princess, they had to get married. Did your people have traditions like that?”

Allura sniffed primly, noting Lance's hopeful expression. “Not necessarily, and the shower room has proper privacy measures. Come along, I'm all sticky, and the rest of you smell no better than I do.”

“Most notably me,” Lizenne admitted freely, sniffing at her damp fur with distaste. “Shiro, you too, you look like a cool sluice would do you some good.”

He accepted the hand that she offered him and let her pull him to his feet, using that as an excuse to glance down at her shadow. It was no different from his own, a mere dim patch on the floorplates, but he found little comfort in that. Nevertheless, she was correct. It was a distinct relief to shed his armor and stand under the spray of cool water in the showers, and he felt better for it afterward. They headed for the kitchen after that, Lizenne leaving the spear propped up against the wall in the training deck; nobody blamed her, since the thing was not the sort of tool one sliced bread with. Armed with sandwiches, they made their way up to the bridge.

“There you are, team,” Coran said cheerfully as they entered, “we're just finishing up the calculations for the next jump, which should take us out into space that is only rife with mundane hazards. Y'know, the ones you can poke with a stick without being turned into an endtable or something. It's a bit of a shame that the Altean Exploratory Corps never got a look at this region. Think of the discoveries that might have been made here, and the advances in aetheric science!”

Zaianne snorted. “Assuming that any of them would have survived the trip. We've been very lucky. Are you ready, Modhri?”

“ _All of the diagnostics have come up clean, thankfully. Hunk and Pidge had some difficulty in straightening out what had gone wrong.”_ Modhri replied with a concerned frown. _“I'm told that the only thing that kept that anomaly from killing the_ Chimera _entirely was the envirodeck, although they didn't say why.”_

The doors had hissed open as he spoke, allowing Pidge and Hunk entry. They looked clean, but tired, and there was a faint scent of peanut butter cookies hanging about both of them. “The envirodeck is a piece of Zampedri,” Hunk said firmly, “and that place is special. It's got so much life, and it holds onto that life like you wouldn't believe. Whatever that anomaly was, it was the total opposite. You're lucky that you just lost a few systems, man.”

Pidge nodded, and shivered. “It was complete and total nothingness. Super-complete and total. There wasn't even any space or time in it. That shouldn't be possible, but there it was! If we'd hit that thing, we not only would have ceased to exist, but I'm pretty sure that we never would have existed at all.”

“ _And would have taken the Lions along with us. Oh, dear.”_ Modhri cast a worried yellow gaze at Zaianne and his wife. _“That would have unraveled much of history like a cheap sweater, wouldn't it?”_

“The last ten thousand, one hundred and fifty-six standard years, if Pidge is correct, which is rather more than I care to think about.” Lizenne humphed. “We can run the concept past Slav later, though it might make his brain explode.”

Shiro smiled at that thought. “It's a good thing you dodged it, Zaianne. Now, let's get out of here. Coran, you might want to mark off this section of space as a no-trespassing zone.”

“Already done, believe you me,” Coran said darkly. “There were a few spots like this known to us back in the day, but they were rare enough that everyone thought they were a myth. This place... it's unheard of. Aha, the calculations are in, and we are ready to go, Madame. Shall we?”

“With all speed,” Zaianne replied, and opened the wormhole that would take them to relative safety.

 

Lotor leaned back in his command seat and smiled at the chatter coming through the comms. His captains, the ones lucky enough to trade in their conventional warships for the new Ghamparva craft, anyway, were very happy with their current situation. The _Vishta_ -Class ships in particular had capabilities above and beyond the conventional warships that the regular military could muster, and their new captains and crews were chattering happily among themselves as a result. Lotor was feeling particularly pleased with himself as well; he'd gotten a terse little note of protest from the Commander of the Ghamparva himself that morning. Just of protest—the Head Foreman at Nelargo Shipyard had rather glumly but efficiently walked the chosen pilots through the activation process that had those ships answering to no hand but theirs, and Lotor and the Commander both knew that the only way to change that was to destroy those AI's entirely. Which would ruin those ships, he knew, or require a month's time in dry dock to refit them. That he hadn't gotten a similar message from his father yet was also a plus. Zarkon did value his pet killers somewhat, but he did not tolerate unprofessional behavior in anyone. Perhaps he felt that they'd gotten a little complacent, and that the loss of thirty brand-new craft would teach them a lesson in vigilance.

A movement at his elbow heralded the presence of Lieutenant Tilwass, who had been checking up on recent events. “Report,” Lotor said quietly.

Tilwass nodded, although he didn't look happy. “Empire's lost Bericonde, sir. The whole system's been taken away from us, and it doesn't look like we'll be able to reclaim it any time soon. Both training bases had their starports blown to bits, the defense fleets were destroyed, and so were a couple who came in to help.”

Lotor frowned. “Only two others?”

Tilwass gestured an affirmative. “'Fraid so, sir. The Ghost Fleet did something to the local commnets that blanked out the whole area. The only reason that those two fleets showed up at all was because they heard the silence. Worse, a lot of those ships were taken intact and are now guarding the system against us. According to a few witnesses who escaped when the fight started, Voltron was there, along with the missing Mobile Fort Auzorel, and something that looked like it might have been one of those big comm-stations once, probably the one that got stolen when Dinvashko was hit. And the Castle of Lions and the _Chimera Rising_ too, but who's counting?”

Lotor humphed. “Was the _Night Terror_ there?”

“Yessir, and one of the witnesses saw something weird about that,” Tilwass shook his head. “After they got him calmed down, at least. She'd torn his ship in half. He'd been one of the pilots, you see, and all of a sudden she broke off her attack, turned around, and boosted toward an asteroid field screaming like something out of one of the nastier hells. There was a big flash of dark energy, he says, and it peeled half of her hull off on one side.”

Lotor hummed thoughtfully. “Haggar's work, or some of her Druids. Probably the Druids, since even she seems to prefer not to face Hoshinthra in person. Was the _Quandary_ there as well?”

“Yessir,” Tilwass replied. “The whole crowd, or most of it, was committed.”

Lotor grunted in distaste. “She was after either that ship or the Lions, then, each being both tempting and critical targets. I suspect that the _Terror_ smelled sorcery and attacked, foiling the strike. Still, it is good to know that the _Terror_ can be damaged. What can be hurt can be killed. She was only damaged?”

“Hurt, but not out of action. Nobody hung around after that if they had any choice in the matter, believe me.” Tilwass humphed faintly. “Bericonde system's still under comm silence right now, and we can't get--”

“Your highness!” the comm officer spoke up suddenly. “We've just received a coded message from one of your casual informants. The Castle and the _Chimera_ have just been spotted.”

Lotor sat up a little straighter in his chair; he'd set up a rough network of spies over the last several years, although the “casual informants” had been something of a long shot. Fringe-loving hermits for the most part, those who lived out on the very ragged, remote edges of the Empire and watched unknown space for anything interesting in return for a small allowance. Most of the time there wasn't anything of note out there, but just occasionally there was something worth investigating. “Where?”

“Just this side of the Szarakan Cluster, my Lord,” the officer said, sounding a bit surprised about that. As well he should be; the Cluster was nowhere near Bericonde. “They're alone, too, but it's bad territory. The _Night Terror's_ been seen there sometimes, and it's a known haunt for Gantarash... and other things. Weird stuff happens around that Cluster, sir.”

Lotor smiled. “I think that we are equipped to deal with a ship-clan of cannibals, and if we can take the Castle and the _Chimera_ before anything else finds them, then all the better. Set a course for the Szarakan region, Pilot. I will have those ships, and all that they contain.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

 

“Any evil bugs yet?” Lance asked warily.

“No, but we're watching.” Zaianne replied absently, frowning at the starchart.

They had come out of the star cluster safely enough, but at a very odd angle, and she and her fellow pilots and navigators were having a hard time finding familiar reference points. They had parked their ships in orbit around a barren, rocky little dwarf planet for the time being while they sorted themselves out; there was a living world closer in toward the sun, but both Lizenne and Zaianne had been unwilling to approach it. Too tempting, they had said, and too likely that they would find Gantarash camping there. Even so, they wouldn't stay here long—Gantars were experts at sniffing out potential prey, and would not hesitate to attack if they spotted the two big support ships.

“Blast,” Coran muttered sourly, poking at the controls. “I can respect a healthy desire for secrecy, that's perfectly all right when you're hiding an entire civilization from certain doom, but did they have to drop us out in the middle of nowhere like this? Even the somewhere is mostly nowhere, and it's full of unpleasantness. Aha. This looks familiar. Recognize this constellation, Madame?”

Zaianne considered a long string of blue and green stars thoughtfully, and gave him a slow nod. “I think so. That might be the Gems of Iltireen... yes, I think it is. Modhri?”

“ _According to my charts, yes,”_ Modhri responded. _“There's the old double nova above the fifth star, and the emission spectra matches. It's something of an enemy stronghold, but we'll be in a better position to rejoin our friends from there, if we're careful.”_

“Caution will be our watchword,” Coran said staunchly, tapping in the coordinates. “Anytime you're— _Quiznek!”_

Suddenly, the space off to the Galactic South was full of ships, some of which they recognized. Pidge spat a curse and pointed to the largest, teeth bared in fury. “Lotor! That's Lotor's fleet! How did he find us?”

“Ghamparva!” Zaianne snarled, indicating the formation of smaller, darker ships. “I've seen that many together only once before, and it cost us a base and some of our best men.”

“Get to the Lions!” Allura shouted, “Now! We'll try to clear you enough space to open a wormhole, and then we will leave.”

As one, the team turned and ran. Shiro started toward the lift that would take him to the black Lion's bay as well, but Allura was the faster, and he groaned in frustration as she vanished down the shaft. Lizenne's hand gripped his shoulder hard and turned him toward the screens again with an admonishing look. “Not just yet. Soon, but not now. Eyes forward, soldier, and be ready to offer advice if you receive any pertinent messages. Any help at all might be vital!”

He shook himself, drew in a deep breath, and got a grip on his churning emotions. “Right,” he muttered half to himself, and stepped over to Coran's console. His heart ached with envy, though, and his right fist clenched involuntarily at his hip, seeking a bayard that was not there.

“Particle barrier up,” Zaianne snapped as the Lions flew past, and the hexagonal facets of the ship's shield sprang into view. “Have a care, everybody, those little ships are as fast and agile as fighter craft, and their cannon are much stronger than we're used to seeing. Evade and deflect where you can, and avoid direct hits. Shoot to kill; I will not leave those monsters alive behind me.”

“ _You sound awfully sure that those guys have teamed up with Lotor's guys,”_ Hunk said dubiously. _“He's a prince. He could have just bought them or something.”_

Zaianne growled, glaring at the oncoming enemy. “No. Those ships are strictly reserved for the Emperor's pet killers, and they do not share. Part of the reason why the Blade has none is that they are keyed to their pilots, and their pilots alone. Lotor would have had to have stolen them right off of the production line.”

“ _You're the expert,”_ Hunk said, dodging an ion blast. _“But those are really new ships. Like, just completed a week or two ago, and they don't feel... well, they don't feel like the one we used to rebuild Jasca. Not as evil.”_

Zaianne humphed. “Perhaps he did steal them, then. If so, we have a small advantage. None of his pilots will have been trained to use the more specialized systems. All the same, be very careful.”

“ _An untrained fighter can take down a master, just by accident,”_ Keith said, reciting the old truism, _“newbies are unpredictable. Got it.”_

Shiro heard Lizenne chuckle and mutter in a low voice, “Ye Gods. If the boy did steal them, then Great-Aunt Inzera must be livid. More than a third of Nelargo Shipyard's income comes from serving the Ghamparva's needs, and you can bet your bippy that they will refuse to pay her the balance for the stolen goods. Hah. They may even demand a refund.”

After that, there was no time for talking. Lotor seemed to be as determined to take the support ships as he was to capture the Lions, and all three pilots soon had their hands full with keeping the shields intact and the enemy at a distance. Shiro watched helplessly along with Lizenne as Voltron formed up and did its best to draw their fire away from the Castle and the  _Chimera_ . The Galra witch was muttering constantly under her breath, not just a running commentary, but the peculiar syllables of various cantrips. One of those he recognized as the one that cooled emotions and calmed minds, for he felt the influence of it himself and heard Zaianne's relieved breath hiss out, but he didn't recognize the others at all. He certainly recognized her tone of voice when she spat a string of furious words that practically turned the air blue, and then sneezed violently.

“Aetheric shields,” she told him, rubbing at streaming eyes. “Not as bad as the ones on the Center when we went to fetch you home, but not much better. I can't help them.”

“Help the Castle, then, if it'll let you,” Shiro replied, searching for his own strange, half-understood talents, “or help Modhri. I'll try to see... whatever I can.”

“Don't strain yourself,” she shot back. “If you start getting a headache, _do not_ push it any harder. You'll be no good to your team if you burn out your synapses.”

Shiro nodded, took a deep breath, and turned his gaze inward to that place in the back of his mind that had sprouted predictions like mushrooms after a rain during the battle of Bericonde. To his horror, there was nothing there.

 

A heavy impact on the shield shook Voltron from crown to heels, bringing cries of protest from every Paladin. The Ghamparva craft were indeed ships like no other, and they respected the Blade of Marmora all the more for their expertise in taking these guys on. Unlike the huge conventional ships, these things didn't sit around waiting to be sliced open with a handy Jawblade, oh no—they were as agile as the Lions themselves, and they packed a punch that a Robeast would admire. Everything about them was several notches above the general run of Galra craft, including their shields, which were proving difficult to break. The guns were a problem, too; while each ion cannon couldn't slow Voltron down all that much, ten or twenty together were a real hazard, and keeping the rest of them away from the two support ships was becoming a real problem. Oh, the Castle and the _Chimera_ had quite good defenses of their own, but they were not designed to handle things like this. Particularly not the Castle, which had been cutting-edge technology when it was built... ten thousand, six hundred years ago, and it did not have Voltron's ability to learn new tricks.

Lance boosted them out of the way of another mass broadside, and Allura called on Hunk to activate the scattergun. Hunk's bayard was in the socket before she'd finished speaking, and while the brilliant seeker pulses from that weapon served to drive the Ghamparva craft off, it did not stop them from coming back.

Lance groaned angrily; the rest of Lotor's fleet was hanging back, allowing the new ships to play unaccompanied, and that rankled. Worse, it seemed to be working. “Holy crow, what are those guys made of?” he complained. “Adamantium or something? The other ships aren't anything like these!”

“ _Ghamparva are the elites, under the personal command of the Emperor,”_ Zaianne replied tensely. _“They aren't even a part of the Military, and are tasked with dealing with situations and foes that the regular troops can't handle. They are not numerous, thankfully; it takes a very specific sort of person to qualify for elevation to their ranks. Much like the Blade of Marmora in some ways. Their ships are equipped with the very highest-grade systems, and each craft costs as much as an entire city to build, including the people in it.”_

“Great,” Keith grunted, swinging the sword and missing a dark ship by mere meters. “How do your guys handle these?”

“ _Usually by avoiding them, or sabotaging them while they're grounded,”_ Zaianne admitted. _“When in a space battle, it's best to aim for the rear. The drives interfere with their shielding a bit, and the shields are slightly weaker there. Or, if possible, we use the local terrain to make things difficult for them.”_

“Yeah, face-planting into an asteroid is bad, no matter what,” Hunk agreed, firing another burst of seeker pulses, this time targeting the engine sections. “Do we have anything like that handy, Princess?”

“No,” Allura said worriedly, “nothing but gas and dust, and not much of that. Pidge, Keith, can you remove their aetheric shielding?”

“They're too fast!” Pidge said, groping mentally after the ships as they whizzed by. “I need time to get a fix on them, and they're not giving me any. Keith?”

“A little distracted here, Pidge,” Keith replied, using the sword to deflect another blast. “I think... I think I might have something. Dad took me to a circus once, and the animal trainers had tigers jumping through burning hoops. Not real ones, the Animal Protection League would have had the circus for lunch if they were real, but they sure looked real. I think that... yeah. Lance, get us some distance, and Allura, give me a boost. I'm going to try something. Dropping the sword now, guys.”

Lance obligingly boosted them away even as Allura pulled in a dose of power and fed it into the red Lion. Concentrating hard and taking careful aim at the nearest pair of Ghamparva craft, he struck. It was visible even to the naked eye as a puff of scarlet-gold flame that emitted from the red Lion's jaws just in front of the speeding ships, so close that they had no way to dodge. Those flames enveloped them, taking on a garnet tint as the shields were burned away. Pidge struck an instant behind him, almost as a reflex, and Hunk right behind her. The two ships went dead instantly, drives sputtering out and tumbling helplessly through the void as their systems shut down hard.

Lance gave a triumphant whoop. “That was _great!_ Do that again!”

“Ow,” Keith replied in a thin, pained voice. “Not just now, Lance. That was bigger than I'm used to, and it hurt. Scorched my eyebrows again, too.”

“Not good,” Allura said, and fed a stream of energy into the blue Lion. “Lance, see if you can ease him, and Pidge, you'll want to help Keith when he tries that technique again.”

“On it,” the green and blue Paladins chorused.

Lance took in the power Allura had given him and channeled it through the Lion-bond, finding Keith with no trouble at all. He'd understated his injuries again, Lance noticed—scorched eyebrows were only the start. His under-armor had drawn off most of the heat, but he'd given himself what looked to be a really bad sunburn. Lance remembered the lessons that he'd been given and used his element's natural qualities to absorb the excess heat, not just from Keith's body but from the red Lion's cockpit as well, and used it to keep himself warm as he soothed away the burns. He could feel his power wanting to mesh fully with Keith's again, and for a moment he wondered what would happen if he and the others started up one of those circle-sessions while Voltron was assembled. He had no time to pursue that thought, for the other twenty-eight Ghamparva ships were determined to avenge their damaged fellows.

“Here they come again, guys,” Hunk observed. “You up to doing that fireball thing again, Keith?”

Keith pulled in a deep breath as the pain was leached out of him, and his breath fogged on the suddenly much-cooler air. “Oh, yeah. All together now, people.”

“Let us end this,” Allura said, and thrust the control beams forward.

 

“That was quick,” Lieutenant Tilwass grumbled, watching the two disabled craft go dark. “They learn fast, don't they?”

Lotor puffed an annoyed breath. “They do have a very powerful witch teaching them dirty tricks.”

Tilwass muttered something impolite under his breath. “I can see why Haggar wants her dead. Yeah, and there goes another three. How are they doing that?”

“I have heard tales of fire-mages that could burn away the spells of other practitioners,” Lotor said thoughtfully. “It's a very rare talent, and those who have it tend to spontaneously combust if they are not careful. I suspect that the Lions are amplifying their power somehow.”

Tilwass grunted sourly. “Probably too much to hope for that the Paladin in there will go boom. Shall I tell the rest of the fleet to join in, sir?”

Lotor nodded, watching another of his new ships spiraling helplessly away. “Tell them to pick up the disabled ones while they're at it; perhaps we can make repairs, or at least salvage them. This dancing about has ceased to amuse me, and I want those Paladins and their cronies locked safely in the cells as soon as possible.”

“Yessir,” Tilwass said, and turned to give the necessary orders.

 

“Oh, not cool, guys,” Hunk said angrily, boosting Voltron sharply to the right to avoid an ion beam, and then down to avoid the massed fire of a swarm of fighters. “Not again! We were just starting to get the hang of this and these guys start butting in. Galra are way too pushy. Oh... sorry, Zaianne.”

“ _Don't be,”_ she responded absently, _“you're quite correct. We may have to make a run for it, and possibly back into the star cluster at that. There are simply too many of them, and they have the greater advantage.”_

“ _Sooner rather than later,”_ Modhri said irritably, _“my shields can't take too many more hits without failing, and the Castle can't be much better. Coran?”_

“ _You aren't far wrong,”_ Coran agreed. _“I personally would prefer to avoid the star cluster myself. If you can cut us a path, team—whoops!”_

Lotor's flagship had surged to the fore, the smaller ships scattering out of its flight path in a hurry. The reason for this soon became apparent, for the massive ship let fly with a barrage of cannon fire that the Castle couldn't quite avoid. The particle barrier splintered under the searing power of that blast. The sleek white hullplate below darkened and crumpled, and the whole structure jerked violently as several levels were torn open.

“Hull breach!” Coran shouted over the whooping of the alarms, his fingers flying over the controls. “Sealing off the damage... come on, you _quokkeps,_ seal up... fires reported in levels nine through fifteen... ah, good, the mice and dragons were nowhere near that hit... oh. Oh, dear.”

“ _I don't like the sound of that last bit, Coran,”_ Allura said sharply, _“What's wrong?”_

“That blast hit a major structural member,” Coran said, frowning at his readouts. “If we try to take it through a wormhole, there's a chance that the Castle will break apart. Not a big chance, but... no, it's a pretty good chance... oh, all right, it's fifty-fifty that we'll come out in pieces. We'll have to set down somewhere and make repairs.”

“ _Somehow, I don't think that these guys are going to let us take a time-out to fix things,”_ Keith said grimly. _“Do we have any other options?”_

“Win, or die fighting,” Zaianne said darkly. “I will not surrender.”

Lance groaned wretchedly. _“Oh, come on! There has to be something. Shiro, can you give us a hint?”_

Shiro had been trying to do just that since the fight had started, but his talents had gone utterly silent. It was almost as if there were something blocking the flow of them, a feeling not unakin to the pressure one felt just before a really bad sinus headache. Clutching at his head as if he could jolt that blockage loose through that grip alone, he tried desperately to wring some tiny clue loose through sheer will. There was a stab of pain that went from the crown of his skull right down through his neck vertebrae, and a flash of color and motion that was gone almost before he could grasp it. He gasped and sagged to his knees, and might have fallen further than that if Lizenne hadn't caught him by the shoulders.

“What have you seen?” she demanded.

“Red,” he panted, wiping sweat out of his eyes with a shaking hand. “Big. Lots of... lots of legs, I think. Shiny.”

“ _Kharkumn'naknak,”_ Lizenne said, turning her gaze to the nearby cluster of old red stars. “I should have thought of that. Zaianne, how do the Kharkumn'naknak find their prey?”

“As far as we were able to discover, they listen for hyperburst waves,” Zaianne replied tensely, forcing the damaged ship into a series of evasive maneuvers that the inertial compensators weren't quite able to dampen fully. “Coran, get that barrier back up! Weblums can transport themselves to new solar systems in much the same way that the Castle can, but they're noisy about it. Very loud, very low-frequency waves are produced, far lower than most ships emit unless they've got serious engine trouble.”

“Which we'll have shortly, if you keep jinking us about like that!” Coran broke in. “I think that I know what you're talking about, the radio-telescope clubs back home used to like to listen for them. Quite a distinctive noise, and I think that I can get the Castle's comms to approximate it. Perhaps that big fellow we saw earlier might like a taste of Lotor's flagship, eh?”

“Do it,” Shiro grated out, leaning against Lizenne's legs, his skull threatening to split apart and his vision full of odd-colored glitter. “It's all we've got.”

“All right, then,” Coran said and made a few adjustments.

The sound the Castle made surprised everybody. Coran must have turned the volume up all the way to “Voice Of God”, and it sent tectonic vibrations through every ship in the area. The small portion of the sound that anyone could hear was described later as a cross between the biggest foghorn in all of creation and a bullfrog the size of the Empire State Building.

“ _Lentils,”_ Lance commented in the startled silence that followed. _“They give me gas, too.”_

Allura sighed.  _“Lance, one of these days—by the Ancients!”_

Their broadcast had had the desired result, and there was a volley of amazed comments from the Paladins as the screens suddenly filled up with a gargantuan beast that beggared the imagination. It came out of hyperspace with a reverberating boom of its own, its multitude of graspers uncoiling and spreading out, ready to grab anything that presented itself, gigantic fanged mandibles working eagerly in anticipation. The light of the nearby stars shattered into blood-colored rainbows over the gleaming red scales, and sheets of bluish flame burst from glands spaced along its unbelievably huge body.

“ _Wow,”_ Hunk moaned. _“Oh, holy wow. It's almost as big as the Center!”_

“ _What is that?”_ Keith said in an awed whisper.

“ _Hungry,”_ Pidge replied. _“Guys, we had better get out of here. Now. It can't see the little ships, they're too small for it to focus on, but we're large enough for it to notice.”_

“ _Disengage!”_ Allura snapped, _“Lotor's flagship is bigger than the Castle, and so are many of those in his fleet. If we're lucky--”_

Luck was with them this time. Galra had a tendency to attack when threatened, and one of those big ships let fly with all of its cannon at once. The beams, each one fully capable of blowing a lesser craft to atoms, slashed across the huge, jagged-edged scales and were dispersed harmlessly over the mirror-bright surfaces. These great beasts had evolved defenses against the Weblums' huge natural lasers, and those had proved to be quite effective against this sort of attack as well. It also served to get the creature's attention. Zaianne and Modhri very carefully backed well away as the monster counterattacked, heading for the local star's one living planet, the Lions following behind as rearguard.

“ _Now I know why Weblums will zap anything that gets too close,”_ Hunk said in a low voice. _“Wow. I'd zap like crazy too, if I had one of those things after me. I don't want one of those things coming after me. Tell me that it'll go away, Scary Ninja Space Aunt.”_

Zaianne puffed a breathless laugh. “It has far more interesting things to do than pester us, Hunk, particularly if we set the Castle down on that planet. _Kharkumn'naknaks_ ignore planets, since they aren't equipped to digest them. We need to make repairs anyway, and... ah. Lance, we will need you back aboard ship as soon as possible. Shiro may have hurt himself in giving us that clue.”

“ _I'll be right there,”_ Lance replied, and the Lions followed him back to the Castle.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, we hugely appreciate all the love and encouragement everyone brings us through their comments and kudos. Especially right now, when the muses are still reeling from our loss. Your kind words help us soldier on while we watch our remaining cats plaster themselves over Spanch's front in an attempt to make her feel better. Or feed them. Whichever comes first. ^_^
> 
> (Also? I want Coran's hat.)


	26. Collateral Damage, and One More Surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sleep? Don't know her.

Chapter 26: Collateral Damage, and One More Surprise

 

“That seems to be everything,” Lizenne said some time later. “Can any of you feel any further damage?”

“No,” Keith said wearily, reaching for the plate of sandwiches that Zaianne had brought them. “I think that's it. How are you feeling in there, Shiro?”

Shiro was lying flat on his back on one of the main lounge's couches, his head resting in Lance's lap while the others crowded around on chairs dragged in from the dining room. He was exhausted, and the waistline of his trousers felt looser than it had this morning, which worried him. “Better,” he said faintly. “It doesn't hurt anymore.”

“It had better not,” Lance said, sticking half a sandwich in Shiro's mouth. “I went to a ton of trouble for that part of you, pal. Like, a literal metric crap-ton of trouble! I had to pull your actual empty, soulless head out of Haggar's refrigerator with my own two hands, and keep Keith from going boom, and then keep him from burning up when he did go boom, and then I had to haul the you-juice out of the bucket and cram you back into your empty, soulless head again! Which, I will remind you, I had to pull out of a Robeast first! Shiro, you are going to promise me right now that you will not mess up that head of yours again, okay? We've only got the one, and it's hard to fix when it breaks!”

“At least you are aware of how to make repairs now,” Lizenne said tiredly, reaching for the plate. “Ordinarily, I would have saved those lessons for when you'd had more experience with your talents, but events have a way of forcing things. Just give me one of those sandwiches, Allura? Thank you.”

The others slumped back in their chairs as the exertions of the day finally caught up with them. Shiro had indeed taken damage, and if Lizenne hadn't been right there when it had happened, the damage might have been permanent. She'd eased some of the pain and had stabilized him while Zaianne and Coran had found a good spot to land the Castle, but they'd moved him here and had gotten to work the moment that the Lions had returned to their hangars. It had been tricky, delicate work to mend the inflamed tissues and strained blood vessels, but fortunately nothing had burst and Lizenne had done this sort of thing before. She had shared that knowledge freely with Lance, but had let him and his fellow Humans do most of the work. Related or no, there were profound differences between Galra and Human brain matter that Lizenne had known better than to take risks with. The Lions had helped, of course; Black in particular had made sure that nothing slipped out of position, and Blue and Red had kept things balanced and clean while Shechethra and Yellow had stabilized and encouraged Lance's healing influence.

When Lizenne had finished wolfing down her sandwich and told them, “Well done,” as she did whenever they had made an achievement, they all nodded in acknowledgment and reached for more food.

“Nevertheless, Lance is entirely correct,” she continued, handing Shiro another sandwich. “Don't do that again, Shiro. Forcing this sort of talent is a sure way to cripple it, along with the rest of you. While I can replace most of you, the brain is a one-shot. You were lucky this time, but do not count on that luck again.”

Shiro nodded, taking a big bite of the sandwich. It tasted a little like crisp-fried softshell crab with spicy mayonnaise and was utterly delicious. “I won't. It was sort of important this time, though, and... and nothing was coming through. Something was blocking me. It's gone, now.”

“Was it?” Lizenne asked curiously. “Deliberately?”

“I don't know.”

Pidge frowned, picking a bit of sandwich out of her teeth with a thumbnail. “He's right. I caught just a whiff of that while we were working on him. It was like... sort of... um. Well, have any of you been in a dangerous neighborhood after midnight? Maybe at two or three in the morning, and you get to that place on the block where there's just one working streetlight, and it needed its bulb changed like a month ago, and if you keep walking you'll be in total darkness, but if you don't you'll have to go back to where someone might have already seen you... and you're in the middle of a big, busy city and everything's gone completely silent. That kind of feeling.”

“I've been there,” Lizenne said softly. “Oh, yes, I've been there, and have the scars to prove it. Just when did you get into such a situation, young lady?”

Pidge gave her an embarrassed grin. “A few years ago. I'd gone along with Dad and Matt to a big scientific conference in Chicago, and we wound up staying really late. Then we got lost in the side streets trying to get back to the airport—the whole side of that city is a maze—and then the rental car broke down right in the middle of a really bad neighborhood. It was really tense for a while there until the tow truck showed up.”

Shiro hummed thoughtfully. “I don't know if it's related, but when I was watching you and the others on the training deck earlier, I saw something weird. Your shadow came alive, Lizenne.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Did it?”

He nodded. “It opened a pair of eyes and had a look at me. Eyes like the moon back home, when it's just coming up over the horizon and has that sort of golden-orange color. It winked and smiled, and then went back to normal. There wasn't anything unfriendly about it, but it was kind of unsettling.”

Lizenne looked very surprised for a moment, and then her brow creased in thought. “Did it now...? There are tales of that sort of thing, all of them ancient enough to be counted as mere myths and children's stories. Some of them are cautionary, alas. I cannot be sure.”

Hunk gave her a narrow look. “Are we being haunted again? 'Cause if the kitchen turns on me again, I quit.”

Lizenne shook her head. “I doubt that it was anything so mundane as a ghost. All that I can say is that we have just passed through a portion of very strange space, and in such places, very strange entities might peek through into our universe. We might or might not have caught something's interest. I still don't know what the dragons were trying to protect us against, and they might not have been wholly successful. I'll ask their opinions later. For now, we must rest while we can. Allura, would you check in with Coran and the others? We shouldn't hang around here any longer than absolutely necessary.”

“Of course,” she said, pulling up a screen. “Coran, may we have a status report?”

“ _I was just about to ask you for one, Princess,”_ Coran replied. _“All in one piece, is he?”_

“He'll be fine with a little rest, and please thank Zaianne for the sandwiches,” Allura said, rubbing tiredly at her brow. “They were very good, and much-needed. I'm more worried about the Castle at the moment. How do repairs progress?”

There was a sigh from the bridge.  _“We were hit pretty badly, all right. The damage-control systems held us together well enough on the way down, but it'll take a bit of work to mend and no mistake. There's a gash in the main tower that spans six levels, and it's big enough to throw the green Lion through. Modhri's come down and is doing a personal inspection and Zaianne's helping him, but we'll need you and the rest of your team—Hunk especially—to effect full repairs. This is a good ship, but the poor old thing can't mend itself like the Lions can, and all of the support infrastructure that was built to take care of it... well, it simply doesn't exist anymore.”_

Hunk groaned wearily and buried his face in his hands. Allura could relate, being very tired herself. She glanced questioningly up at Lizenne, who looked around at her wilting companions and shook her head. Allura gestured an agreement and turned back to the screen. “It's not going to happen right now, Coran. We have already done more today than was wise, and we need rest. Have you scanned around for any signs of civilization?”

“ _First thing I did after coming down,”_ Coran said darkly, _“I haven't forgotten that this is Gantarash territory. We seem to be alone for the time being, happily enough. This world is mostly prairie, with one decent-sized forest just over there. It seems to be quite uninhabited, although there are the ruins of what looks to be a large structure some distance away, right in the middle of the trees; possibly someone's old military citadel or perhaps a small palace, but that's pretty much it. Modhri has parked the Chimera in orbit to keep an eye on events upstairs. Lotor and his boys seem to have decamped, thankfully. That red giant of ours was a bit much for 'em.”_

Lance vented an overtired giggle. “I'm gonna find that big bug and make him my pet,” he muttered blurrily. “I'm gonna polish him up all shiny and feed him cookies and call him Doodlebug, and he can eat the Center with Zarkon still in it, and then I can go home.”

“Yay, Doodlebug,” Hunk said with a huge yawn. “I will make him the biggest cookies ever. After a nap.”

There was a faint snore from Pidge, who had slumped against Keith, and Shiro was already out cold. Keith wrapped an arm around Pidge to keep her from falling off of her chair and yawned as well. “Nap is good. I like naps.”

Lizenne chuckled and helped Lance ease himself free, lowering Shiro's head gently down onto the cushions. “They are, indeed. Come on, there is enough couch space for all of you. Lie down. You, too, Allura. I will fetch you all blankets. Coran, do you need anything?”

A slightly envious sound of amusement came from the screen. _“A blanket and a lullaby would be delightful, Sister Dearest, but I doubt that I'll have the luxury. Just bring me a bowl of celenra gel and perhaps a glass of iced tea, and that and your company would be a great comfort. We do seem to be in something of a pickle.”_

“We are,” she agreed, fetching an armload of blankets from a nearby cabinet and draping them gently over her adoptive nieces and nephews. “But I've been in worse, and for the moment things are quiet. Hopefully, Doodlebug has frightened off the Gantarash as well. I'll be up shortly, but I'll need to check on the dragons first. They worked hard today, too, and they'll expect some attention in return.”

Coran humphed. _“Have you any idea of what they were trying to ward off?”_

“I have no idea.” Lizenne surveyed the sleeping Paladins, nodded in satisfaction, and fetched out three more blankets. “I might be quite a good witch by my people's standards, but I'm little more than a beginner by theirs. I'm willing to trust their judgment and their talents. After all, we are still alive and free, and our enemies are confounded for the moment. It's not ideal, but it will have to do.”

“ _True.”_ There was a faint yawn from the screen. _“Alfor and his team sometimes found themselves in this sort of situation as well. All part of the heroic lifestyle, of course, but I don't weather that sort of thing as well as I used to. Then again, I'm technically a good ten thousand years older than I should be, so I should be thankful that my health's as good as it is, eh?”_

“Quite. See you in a little while, Coran.”

“ _I await your arrival with great anticipation, Sister Dearest.”_

Lizenne smiled and went to attend to her responsibilities.

 

Hunk vented a long, low whistle at the sight of the damage, one that was echoed by Pidge. She had seen something like that before, when the _Quandary_ had taken the hit that had forced her and her friends to seek refuge in the Stronghold. They were standing outside at the moment with Modhri and Coran, observing the damage from the relative safety and comfort of a perch on a hover-platform, since studying it from inside the ship wasn't a good idea right now. This hole wasn't quite as large as the one that had been torn into the _Quandary,_ but it was proportionally worse; the Castle wasn't as big or as tough as the old Sikkhoran Grand Freighter was, and several very important structural elements had been compromised.

“In a way, we were lucky,” Modhri said quietly, his brows pinched in sympathy for the antique ship's injury. “If that blast had hit one of the lesser towers, it's likely that it wouldn't have survived the landing. The levels that were breached were largely unused. Mostly guest rooms, and those doors had all been sealed since Alfor had left the Castle on Arus. Unfortunately, it hit one of the main structural junctures and some of the plumbing. We'll have to stay away from the upside-down pool for a while.”

Keith cast him a worried look. “It overflowed?”

“It froze, and the antigravity's not working quite right,” Modhri smiled wryly. “It's starting to melt now, and I would not want to be under it when the ice block slides loose.”

“Been there,” Coran mused nostalgically. “Nearly lost Gyrgan that way, once, in the volcanic badlands on the ice planet of Hachirr. Grand fellow, wonderful to be around, and a great help in a fight, but not terribly fast on his feet. A whole ice sheet had peeled off of a mountainside, and nearly squashed him flat. On the other hand, it did squash the despotic warlord that we'd been fighting that day, so we counted it as a win. The locals certainly didn't mind, and threw us quite a party. Great days.”

“Perhaps,” Allura said, examining the long tear in her ship's side. “Was anything else damaged?”

Modhri nodded. “Some of the major power conduits have been severed, and the ventilation systems on those levels blew out when they depressurized. I don't doubt that the pipes are a mess as well. _Chimera_ says that the Castle is very upset, and very much on the defensive right now. You'll have to soothe it a bit before it'll permit any work to be done on it at all, aetheric or physical.”

“How do you mean?” Lance asked. “The defensive systems haven't registered any threats, last I saw, anyway.”

“The Castle's alive,” Coran told him. “A little like the _Chimera,_ and a little like the Lions. It wouldn't have any problem if we had a real Altean repair bay with real Altean mechanics, but you're going to have to fix this aetherically, and it doesn't like people messing around with it in that fashion. I think that hex that Haggar hit you all with a while ago may have frightened it.”

Modhri hummed thoughtfully. “I know that it scared me. How do you intend to do this?”

Hunk gave the ragged, blackened edges of the hole a hard look. “We've lost a bunch of hullplate, but there's more in one of the Castle's storage rooms near the shuttle bay. I can use that to patch the hole, no problem, and reconnecting the pipes and stuff will be fiddly, but it's standardized over the whole ship, so all I have to do is follow the pattern and I'll be fine.”

“Lizenne said that we should tackle this as a group project,” Shiro said with a dubious look at his own hands. “Even if it's just to watch and offer support. With all of us helping, this hopefully won't take too long, or tire us out more than necessary. And it'll give me a better idea of what we're capable of, she said.”

Modhri smiled. “You had better get used to that. Apparently, it's a common tool of the _Tahe Moq_ discipline to make every activity into a learning experience. I'm told that the dragons were ruthless instructors to her, when she first came to their world.”

Keith smirked. “I'll bet. Where is she, anyway?”

“Out with Zaianne and the dragons, doing a little exploration. There is something about this world that worries them, and they're trying to get a better idea of what that might be.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “What, like the fact that those big, ugly, man-eating spider guys like to visit now and again?”

Modhri shrugged. “That may be a part of it. You could ask them yourselves—they're back.”

Sure enough, a pair of large, sand-and-pebble-colored creatures had come trotting out of the trees, a pair of smaller, purple figures riding on their backs. Modhri touched the platform's controls, sending it into a gentle descent that had them back on the ground by the time the scouts returned.

“Hi,” Lance said as the two ladies climbed down from the dragons' shoulders. “Find anything interesting?”

“You could say that,” Zaianne replied, adjusting the fit of her suit; she'd donned her Marmoran armor for the outing, and a year's worth of Hunk's good cooking had put a few spare ounces on her frame despite her regular and rigorous training. “An absence, more than a presence.”

“We decided to have a look in the general direction of the ruins,” Lizenne added, patting Soluk's nose. “Not right up close, but close enough to get a whiff of the place. The Gantars have indeed been using that structure as a sometime campground all right, and it stinks.”

Zaianne grimaced in disgust, showing sharp teeth. “They've never been able to get their minds wrapped around the concept of bathing or basic sanitation. We did discover the remains of a town outside of the citadel. It must have been an elite neighborhood once, for every wall had intricate carvings, and there are traces of paint and gilding still hanging on to the images. From what we could make out, this world was once a holiday retreat for a Jensilgen Clan-King, with a small colony of servant- and craftsman-caste tribes settled here to maintain the royal residence.”

Hunk looked up at the distant shape of the stone structure in the distance, the highest peak of which showed through the treetops in a gleam of pale-yellow marble. “He's gonna be mad about what happened to it.”

“No, he won't,” Lizenne said with a disapproving frown. “I suspect that the Gantars had him and the rest of this world's population for dinner over two hundred years ago, which was approximately when Zarkon enslaved their homeworld. The Jensilgen space navy was once strong enough to keep the Gantars out of this quadrant entirely, and when the Empire crushed it...”

“So much for the folks up here,” Shiro said grimly. “Anything else?”

Tilla uttered a string of unhappy grunts and crackles, complete with a deeply disapproving _gronk._

“She says that the Gantars have stripped this world of any animal bigger than the mice,” Lizenne translated. “Not only is that bad for the local ecosystem, but they didn't leave anything for her.”

“And yet they still come back here. Why?” Zaianne cast a wary look back at the ruins. “Something has been going on over there, and on a fairly regular basis. I could still smell the char from their cookfires, and the stink of rotting meat. The sooner we leave this place, the better, and if we can give those ruins a quick blast from the Castle's cannon on the way out, that will please me even more.”

Soluk grunted in agreement and shook himself, spikes rattling. He yawned and stretched out his back in a very catlike bottoms-up bow and slow lunge forward, and rumbled a question at his mate. Tilla bobbed her head, licked his face tenderly, and then the pair of them headed back through the Castle's front doors.

“They need a nap,” Lizenne said, watching them go with a concerned frown, “We won't be able to count on their help if the worst happens. Warding off that unknown danger earlier took a great deal out of them.”

“We'll manage,” Allura said, turning back to stare up at the damaged Castle. “In the meantime, that must be repaired. We might as well put our armor on, for safety's sake. None of the other work-suits in the Castle have booster jets that are quite as good.”

“In case we fall off,” Keith nodded, and then gave her a quizzical look. “How come the mechanics got the weaker boosters?”

“Their suits were meant for working in orbit,” Coran replied. “Your armor is for both that and planetary work as well, and so had to be more powerful. Used to drive the techs mad with envy, that. Had one incident where one of them swapped out the black armor's booster pack with his own, and it damned near got Zarkon killed. When Zarkon found out exactly who and why, he hunted the tech down and strung him up by the ankles from one of the Castle's upper balconies. It took three vargas before anyone heard him yelling.”

Zaianne chuckled. “My sympathy lies with that technician.”

“As did mine,” Coran smiled wickedly at her. “Zarkon was a good leader, but a terrible bore at times. Right. I should get back up to the bridge so as to run diagnostics as things get put back together. Will you join me, Madame?”

Zaianne shook her head, eyeing the surrounding woods with distrust. “I'd rather stay out here and keep watch on the ground. Lizenne?”

“I want a look at some of these plants and trees,” Lizenne replied. “There might be something useful left here, and we won't get another chance at them.”

Coran struck a dramatic pose, his expression mournful. “Alas! Abandoned! I am bereft! Well, no, no I'm not. I'll see if the mice are up for a game of Dix-Par, since Tilla will be napping. Let's get to it, everybody, that hole won't mend itself.”

 

It was just about this time that something exciting happened, although not for the Paladins... or rather, not quite yet. Hanging in orbit around that abandoned world was a small device that had been carefully disguised as an asteroid about the size of a space heater. Most of the time it drifted silently along in its everlasting circuit around the planet, somnolent, waiting.

Its wait was now over. The passive sensors embedded in its outer housing detected a very large metallic mass, and one that did not share the same mix of elements that would have labeled it as a passing chunk of space trash, nor did it identify itself as being a product of the device's own creators. The device came fully awake for the first time in years, extending extra solar cells and sensory booms to further study the intruder. Rising over the equator now was an object whose contours were not only familiar, but on the Sacred Lists, and a further scan for others of its kind detected a companion on the world below. On the planet itself! Just sitting there, and even larger than the one in orbit! It was with a certain mechanical joy that the little satellite extended its communications spires. These had been designed especially for this sort of work; the technology had been taken as rightful spoils from a race and an organization that were not only on the Sacred Lists, but near the top of the List of Greatly Preferred Ones, and those persons excelled at message encryption. It did not do to spook the prey, or so the Scriptures dictated, and the visitor never detected the near-silent message beam that flicked away into the distant stars.

The recipient of that message was the Ship-Lord Gzrak-Zop-Kazza, First-Hatched of the eight thousandth, six hundred and ninety-seventh Egg-Mass of Ship-Clan Gznop-Pzak-Killipzerat and leader of said Ship-Clan. Not the largest of the Clans, but among the most accomplished, having had a long and venerable history stretching all the way back to the days before the Sacred Nest, their homeworld, had been destroyed. Gzrak-Zop-Kazza had just finished his ritual ablutions when the message came in, which he considered to be very significant. Just a few _zwops_ earlier, another satellite in the same system as the one that had sent this message had relayed a stunning visual: no more than a few astronomical units away from one of the Feasting Grounds, there had been a true Manifestation. A genuine Manifestation, just as described in the Scriptures of H'Zikkat-Phash! Gzrak-Zop-Kazza had marveled along with his clanmates at the gigantic, spectacularly splendid form of Thzat'Mokkzar-Kzog, Her crystalline scales shining in that perfect scarlet, the awesome arcs of Her mandibulae, the vast reach of those perfect graspers, and he himself had led his clan-kin in the Devotions and Aspirations, sacred hymns honoring Her magnificence. Having seen the Great One shining in the starlight, one could not help but believe that She was truly the First Daughter of Ezzpriak'Kzat-Kzat'Dzoar—She Who Spawns The Primal Egg-Mass—and the First Daughter who had Spawned the Gods in the Beginning of All.

Having seen Her with his own eyes, he could easily picture what it might have looked like in that long-ago time: the fallow-gold threads of the Divine Egg-Mass clutched tenderly in the many graspers of the First Daughter, and later, with all of the Gods of the Universe riding safely on Her vast scaly back as She made Her way to every world that might host life. The Scriptures stated that during that long journey, the Gods had striven among themselves for supremacy over all, and that the One Who had achieved that supremacy had been Gzzzok'Pok-Phzzzoar-Glozzk, winning the right to a tithe of flesh from His Siblings and all that They might spawn. That Great One had been the last to have alighted from the sacred back of His Holy Mother to take up Custodianship of the Sacred Nest, and the Nine Favored Consorts that descended with Him had Spawned for Him the Nine Founding Swarms of the Gantarash.

Great Gzzzok'Pok-Phzzzoar-Glozzk had taken great pride in His children, and had tasked them with Fulfilling the Lists, of which there were Four: The List of the Greatly Preferred Ones, whose flesh was the finest and sweetest and brought great pleasure to the God through the offerings that His children made to Him. The List of the Fulfilling Ones, whose flesh was to be savored as fine feast meat. The List of the Distasteful Ones, whose sour or bitter flesh was to be taken only by the penitent. The List of the Eternally Inedible, whose flesh could not be consumed at all. The first two were to be taken with respect and eagerness; the third, merely with respect. The fourth, not at all, and was to be avoided. Only when all of the Spawnlings of all the Gods were known and assigned to a List could the Great Feast of Life begin, when Ezzpriak'Kzat-Kzat'Dzoar Herself would awake from Her long dormancy and summon Her Great Daughters to feed, that all might be consumed, and that all might begin anew. And so it must be, Gzrak-Zop-Kazza thought as he ordered his pilots to take them to where the First Daughter so recently had made Herself known, and so it must be, for his God had willed it.

The Ship-Clan arrived promptly (the technology for the ship's drives having come as rightful spoils as well), and well away from the Feasting Ground so that the prey would not see them. Such caution was vital, and Gzrak-Zop-Kazza was willing to be patient. The satellite had reported that the craft in orbit was one of the larger Hanifor science ships, and those always carried exotic and wondrous things. Not that the thought of a fresh haunch of Hanifor wasn't worth salivating over as well, of course, that people had been granted the honor of a high place on the List of Greatly Preferred Ones long ago. It was the one below on the planet that made his hearts quiver in eagerness. There was a Fifth List, not exactly sacred, but certainly honored and mourned, of Those Who Had Been Destroyed. Destroyed by the Galra, denied their rightful Place at the Feast of Life, a vast and terrible crime that would have won that race a place upon the List of Greatly Preferred Ones even if their flesh had tasted of bleach. Fortunately, they were delicious, but not nearly so much so as the people that had created the tall white ship below. Gzrak-Zop-Kazza had only read the Records and could not attest to it personally, but Alteans were said to be wondrously sweet, with an excellent texture and a pleasant aftertaste. It was quite a large ship, too; perhaps, if there were enough of that people aboard, he might set up a breeding colony. It would please the Divine Ones, he thought, if that delectable race were to be revived. It was a discovery to be celebrated, certainly, and the Feasting Ground was right there.

“We shall take a sampling, and honor them with a Ritual Hunt,” he told his clanmates. “All hail the gifts of the Mother of the Gods.”

“All hail!” they chittered back, and a very short time later, the landers and boarding craft launched.

 

Allura had her hands pressed to the torn plating and was muttering entreaties under her breath as she concentrated on getting it to cooperate. It wasn't—the Castle was fighting her. It seemed to have very clear ideas of what was proper and what wasn't when it came to a repair bay and attendant technicians, and this was not it. Early entries in the Ship's Log had told her that the usual ports of call for the Castle of Lions had all been in Altean home space or at intervals throughout her father's kingdom, as well as certain space stations owned by the more trustworthy of Altea's allied peoples. It was a royal palace, after all, and security was something of a concern. The Castle did not like this end of space, nor did it like this world, and it still wasn't wholly sure about the Humans, who hadn't even made a formal contact with the Altean Royal House yet.

“They're our Paladins, and they've certainly made contact with me!” she hissed irritably at her recalcitrant home. “Give it up! None of your usual stops exist anymore, and this is an emergency!”

The Castle let it be known that it had seen plenty of emergency situations thanks to this one particular set of Paladins, and enough was enough already. After ten thousand years of neglect and over a decaphebe on the run, it _deserved_ a properly trained crew of properly Altean repairmen in a proper Altean orbital dock, thank you very much, and had put up with far too many cases of bash-to-fit, paint-to-cover maintenance to settle for anything else. _And_ a copilot and a senior engineer that weren't Galra would be nice, too.

“Now, stop that!” Allura snapped at it. “Zaianne does drive you hard, but she's a better pilot than Grandfather was, and poor Modhri has cared for you to the best of his ability, even though he has the _Chimera_ to look after as well! You didn't object to having Zarkon in the house, now did you?”

Zarkon, the ship informed her, had not presumed to take the controls. He had been the Lions' responsibility, and even he hadn't constantly dropped shed fur around the place like this lot did, or got weird aetheric residue all over the training and entertainment decks. As of this moment, the ship was on strike, and would continue to be so until properly trained and experienced personnel could be brought aboard.

Allura knocked a fist on the hullplate in frustration, then stepped back with a glare at the blue-screened peak of the main tower. “This isn't working.”

“ _Gotten balky, has it?”_ Coran asked sympathetically through their comms. _“Not the first time that it's done that. Grandfather always did put a lot of himself into his work, and this was his greatest creation. Good man, very patient, but even he could turn nasty if pushed hard enough, and the Castle's the same. Tell you what, I'll run a deep scan and put on that recording of his favorite classical music to relax it a bit. It'll only take a varga or so, and it usually does the trick.”_

Hunk humphed, frowning up at the damage. “I don't see why I can't just go ahead and start work anyway. What's to stop me?”

“ _The Castle's aetheric security measures, of course,”_ Coran replied. _“That sort of talent was fairly common among my people, and it didn't do to have politically-minded mages messing with the architecture. In the old Royal Palace back home—that was the traditional family seat, very ancient, very historical—they had to rebuild the throne room six times because some joker kept weakening the floor underneath the Throne itself. It doesn't do a King any good to sit down on the third floor and wind up in the basement a moment later, you know, so Grandfather made sure that such things couldn't happen in this one. If you try anything without the Castle's go-ahead, it'll knock you flat and leave you with a splitting headache that'll last for days.”_

“Pass,” said Hunk; really bad headaches had a tendency to upset his stomach as well, and he hadn't been joking when he'd told Shiro that he needed that round belly of his. “Okay, so... now what?”

Modhri shrugged. “We wait, I guess. Does it really object to my working on it, Allura?”

He actually sounded a little hurt about that, and she patted his hand comfortingly. “The Castle's in a bad mood, is all. Coran's grandfather was a bit of a snob at times, and that rubbed off on his creations a little.”

There was a snort from the comms. _“Like your own uncles weren't? The Grand Duke Vaelfor, for example, that was Alfor's second-youngest brother, was perilously close to being a total xenophobe. Wouldn't have anything un-Altean near him if he could possibly manage it, and wound up living on a private estate in the Moneira Valley. Very conservative community over there, and he just loved them. Raised batlup berries and clauk orchards, and did so well in the numvill business that he didn't mind that his aversions had cost him his shot at the Crown. His Special Reserve was considered the best on the planet, and he always overcharged the offworld traders dreadfully.”_

Modhri smiled. “That sounds very much like some of Lizenne's relatives. Oh, well. I'll set us back down then. Call us when the Castle's more willing to negotiate, will you?”

“ _Certainly,”_ Coran replied. _“And now I shall play the Grand Dame Ludrimallia's_ “Moons Rising Over The Marsh Fields”, _accompanied by the full Coroquo City Orchestra, directed and conducted by the celebrated Baspar Acunis Aquinis, Esquire, the Third. Might want to shut off your comms, team, old Dame Mally was known to crack armorglass when she was in full voice, and Baspar liked to see enthusiasm in his singers.”_

From the speed with which Allura did just that, the others guessed that Coran's advice was good and lost no time in deactivating their own. Modhri set the platform back down on the grass without so much as a bump and looked around with a sigh. “I'm going to see if I can't find Lizenne. There were some plants near the ruins that she wanted a closer look at, so she and Zaianne went back out. I need a little exercise that doesn't involve damaged ship parts, and she might need someone to carry the more interesting plant samples.”

Shiro squinted up at the trees, which had foliage in an interesting pinkish-orange color and dangling strings of large red flowers. “I could use a walk, too. Want some company?”

“Of course,” Modhri replied pleasantly. “We might even make an archaeological find, if only by tripping over it. Let me just warn her that we're coming.”

A few words on his belt-comm told them that Lizenne would be happy to have all of them with her. This world, devoid of large animals though it might be, had plenty to recommend it in the vegetation and small-creatures department. She had already found numerous samples of seeds, flowers, nuts, fungi, berries, roots, and leaves that were worthy of further study, and some of the local pollinators were very pretty. She had also found remains of the previous inhabitants which weren't, and would appreciate their presence.

They found her after ten minute's worth of walking through the dappled shade of the woodlands, although they spotted Zaianne first, perching on what was left of a masonry wall that jutted up out of a tangle of vines. Lizenne was standing at its base, holding something large and a sort of greenish-white. A skull, they realized when they got a little closer, and from something that had been large and sort of bovine in appearance.

“There you are,” Lizenne murmured, holding up the skull. “We've found what was left of the Jensilgen Clan-King and his entourage. They were trying to sneak out of a servant's entrance when the Gantars caught up with them, and there are signs that these people were cooked and eaten on the spot. You can still see the firepit in the courtyard just beyond this wall. This poor fellow was probably the King himself—note the carving on the horns, and the traces of platinum foil still in the lines? Very much the royal fashion of the time.”

Lance swallowed hard. “Sorry. Too busy noticing the big hole in the back.”

Lizenne nodded, running a long finger around the neatly-excised section of braincase. “Typical Gantar habit; they consider a nice big brain to be a delicacy.”

Modhri made a revolted noise in the back of his throat. “I used to see that all the time, before Haggar got her hands on me, usually on Galra skulls.”

“Ew, really?” Pidge asked, peering at the skull.

“Gross,” Hunk muttered.

Modhri grimaced in disgust. “Oh, yes. It was a standard policy of mine to search any ship that the Gantars had attacked for survivors, and especially the ships that we took from them. We tried to take their ships as intact as we could—they often kept meat larders, you see, special holds full of live prey in desperate need of rescue. They'd take just about anybody, but we Galra have been a special favorite of theirs for a very long time. I am proud to say that I have saved many lives. Not nearly as many as I could have wished to, but many.”

“The Blade does the same,” Zaianne said, leaping down from her perch. “Gantarash are vermin, and we treat them as such. Some of our recruits come from those rescuees. What are you all doing out here? Has the Castle been repaired already?”

Keith shook his head. “It's too busy sulking to work with us, Mom. Coran's trying to calm it down, but it'll take a while. What else have you two found out here?”

Lizenne put the skull down in a niche in the wall and tugged at the strap of the satchel that she had slung over one shoulder. “Some very interesting samples. Possibly a new antibiotic, a few aromatics, some potential cooking herbs and spices, things like that. Some I took simply because they were beautiful. Zaianne?”

Zaianne waved a hand in the direction of the ruined palace. “Ruins. This used to be a fairly large habitation. We're on the edges of it at the moment, in the district where the lower-caste servants lived. The housing was better closer in to the palace, homes and workshops for upper servants and craftsmen. There is a ring of what used to be luxury houses around the palace itself, probably for guests not quite distinguished enough to rate a suite in the Royal Residence, or perhaps were private quarters for the higher nobles. The palace itself is still fairly intact, especially the main tower, but the main courtyard out front is a boneyard. There is a very large walled enclosure over there as well, possibly the pleasure gardens. The walls are very high, and still in good shape.”

Lizenne frowned. “From what I've read, Jensilgens preferred being outdoors whenever the weather permitted, and garden spaces were a necessity even for the lowest castes. Kings often had private walled gardens that covered as much as ten square miles or more. The Gantars didn't damage it?”

Zaianne shook her head. “No. Most of the stonework is fully intact. A few decorative elements have been knocked off by fallen branches, but that's it.”

Lizenne hummed. “Odd. I wonder if--”

A sudden sharp warning tone from Modhri's belt-comm made everybody jump. “Something's approaching the _Chimera,”_ Modhri said, grabbing at the device. “What is it?”

“ _Surprise attack by swarm of small craft, identified as Gantarash boarders, Pilot Modhri,”_ the _Chimera's_ AI responded. _“Instructions?”_

“Get out of there!” he barked, “Do not let them get within seven _selpars_ of you. Jump to the nearest stellar system over if you have to, but refuse all boarders until we contact you again!”

“ _Acknowledged,”_ the _Chimera_ replied, _“use the most recent passcode to do so, stealth band. Implementing given instructions now.”_

“Damn,” Zaianne muttered.

Lance gave Modhri a hard look. “Did you just send our emergency ride out of the System?”

“He had no choice,” Lizenne snapped, scanning the sky. “One of the promises that we made to the Elder Dragons was that we would permit no portion of Zampedri to fall into Gantarash hands. That includes Tilla and Soluk, so we had better get back to the Castle, and quickly!”

Pidge was in total agreement. “Allura, I actually had to live on the same ship with a Gantar for three months. If I have to, I will hack the Castle in order to get it fixed. Come on!”

They leaped into a run, but had gone no more than a few strides when Coran contacted them. _“Paladins! The_ Chimera's _just bailed on us, and there is a whole Gantarash ship-clan coming up from the south! Get back here, and hurry!”_

“Working on it,” Shiro puffed, willing his legs to propel him faster.

There was a sudden flash of light that forced them to a stop a few minutes later, and a burst of static from their comms. Shiro stumbled and nearly fell when his armor suddenly doubled in weight. Zaianne caught and steadied him, slowing to a halt as the rest of the group tried to clear their vision.

“What was that?” Keith demanded.

“And what's wrong with our armor?” Hunk added.

His comm sputtered, and Coran's voice was dimly audible through the fuzz. _“Some sort... energy burs... electromagnetic... too much for... astle's defenses... ystems are shutting... going dead!”_

Zaianne growled and grabbed Shiro's helmet, shouting into his communicator. “Barricade yourself inside the Castle, Coran! Seal off the damaged levels as much as possible, and _Do Not_ open any outside door for any reason, not until we come back! Do you hear me?”

If Coran responded, they never heard it. There was a flash of light and a sound like _“vworp!”_ , which made the universe go away.

 

Gzrak-Zop-Kazza picked his way through the alien vegetation to have a look at the captured prey, which, out of deference for the coming Ritual Hunt, nobody had actually taken a taste of yet. He felt a humble sense of gratitude for the Mother of God's gift when he saw the still forms lying on the ground and smelled the fragrance of their bodies. Three Galra, yes, but two were females, and those were only very rarely captured alive. One of them was even rarer, being of an elite organization that was extremely difficult even to find. There were five bipeds of an unknown species, all in the same sort of armor, and they smelled odd, but delicious. The last, though... oh, the last one! Gzrak-Zop-Kazza had never felt the urge to write poetry before, but he felt it now. The subtle, sweet fragrance, almost like the scent of fresh egg-silk, slightly earthy, young and healthy... oh, yes, that had to be an Altean. The possibility that there might be more inside that big white ship made him weak in the knees.

“It will be a Hunt like no other,” he said softly, running clawed graspers over the rose-colored helmet. “This one, we will dedicate to the Mother of God with all possible honors.”

One of his sept-lords stirred, mandibles working. “And if there are no more of those aboard ship? Such creatures were placed upon the Fifth List long ago, and four days of public mourning followed.”

Gzrak-Zop-Kazza hissed. “That they still live is self-evident. There must be a colony somewhere. If there are many more aboard the ship, we shall start another. If there are none, then we will honor this one tonight and seek out that colony. Alteans were long-lived, but not _that_ long-lived, and this one cannot be more than six _kzitli_ old. Gather these up, and let us take them to the Feasting Ground.”

“And the ship?”

“Scan it well, and then get it open,” Gzrak-Zop-Kazza replied shortly, cradling the precious Altean gently in his arms. “We shall have our answer either way.”

 

Coran, in the meantime, was doing his best to ensure that a break-in didn't happen. That much of Zaianne's command had gotten through, although he didn't really need her to tell him that. He'd faced Gantarash before, and his people had known those monsters of old long before he'd been been born. The Castle's drive was down, although emergency power supplies were active and holding steady, which was just enough to seal the Castle up like a vault and keep vital systems like the ventilation and the infirmary running for a little time. The damaged levels were a terrible weakness since there would be no getting the particle barrier up now, but he had locked off the lifts on that entire side, which should slow the bastards down a little. The mice had reported for duty instantly, of course, being the most stalwart of Altean space mice possible, but the dragons were a different story altogether. Platt was currently jumping up and down on Soluk's nose and squeaking as loudly as he could, but he might as well have been trying to get a bounce out of a boulder. The dragons were thoroughly asleep, and no act of mouse looked to be able to awaken them. Coran was feeling a little nonplussed as well. It wasn't that he hadn't ever encountered enormous sleeping beasts before. Oh, no, Alfor and his lads had run into such somnolent creatures with depressing regularity, sometimes three or four in a week. It was just that he and the others had been more interested in allowing those beasts to keep on sleeping despite the team's antics, that was the problem. He was pretty sure that Tilla wouldn't actually try to bite him in half, but you never knew with large predators.

He paused, feeling an odd tingle run through him from top to toe; his wrist-comp beeped warningly, informing him that the Castle had just been scanned, and with a very powerful device. The ship had blocked most of it, but from the feel of it, the Gantars probably had a pretty good idea of what color his underwear was right now, and it wouldn't be long before they decided to come in and have a look for themselves.

“Right,” he murmured to himself. “Stiffen up, old chap, needs must when the situation drives, it's time for a real man to take action.”

He looked at Soluk's head, which easily massed twice what he did, even after far too many of Hunk's cookies, and was very spiky.

“Er,” he said, and wondered if he could possibly do this from behind a wall, preferably two or three. “Um, hello? Time to wake up! We've got a bit of a situation here, and would rather appreciate your help. What do you say?”

Tilla snored.

Coran frowned, mustache bristling, and (after making sure that he had plenty of room to run if that became necessary) shouted as loud as he could. _“WAKE UP! WE ARE EXPERIENCING AN ALIEN INVASION, AND NEED YOUR HELP TO REPEL IT! LET ME REPEAT: WAKE UP!”_

Soluk snored.

Coran sighed. “All right, I hate to have to do this, but you've given me no other choice.” He waggled a finger at the sleeping dragons. “Just so you know, if things were any different, I'd be drawing crude pictures all over your faces in permanent marker right now.”

The dragons didn't respond to that, either, and so he went to impliment his emergency measures. A few minutes later, the frustrated mice saw him shuffling into the room with a pair of objects that made them squeak in horror.

“Get clear,” he panted, putting one of the heavy things down. “This is unforgivably rude in at least three thousand cultures, and they might not take it well.”

The mice streaked for safety, and Coran planted his feet and got a good grip on the bucket he was holding. With a heave, he tossed the contents directly into Soluk's face. It wasn't a terribly technical solution, but it was effective; five gallons of ice water up the nose will awaken just about anything with breathing apparatus. Soluk jerked awake with a _GRONK_ that rattled the walls, snorting water out of his nostrils. Before he could react further, the next bucketful hit Tilla square in the snout, and she jerked her head up so sharply that she banged her forehead against Soluk's lower jaw. Squawking in protest and sneezing violently, they looked around with vengeful eyes for the perpetrator of this outrage.

Coran, not being totally stupid, had taken refuge behind the doorframe. Taking hold of the broom he'd found in the same closet as the buckets, he waggled it across the frame to get their attention. “Tilla, Soluk, sorry for the offense, but it's kind of important. We've got Gantarash all over the place outside, and pretty soon they'll be coming inside. Just thought you ought to know. Before it became a surprise, sort of thing. Please don't kill me.”

There was a low, growly, grumbly conversation in the room, and a short burst of crackling syllables that set the broom on fire. Coran dropped it with a yelp, blowing frantically on his fingers, and when he looked up, he found himself staring into six angry blue eyes. Tilla was not pleased with him at all.

Coran accepted the inevitable and drew himself up nobly. “Go ahead and bite if you like, but that won't change the fact that it's just you, me, and the mice in here, and a whole lot of nasty cannibals out there. They've probably got the others by now, too, and there isn't anything that we can do about it.”

His wrist-comp beeped again, alerting him to something that he'd forgotten about completely. “Oh. Scratch the 'you and me and the mice' bit. There's a Galra soldier loose in the infirmary as well.”

Soluk muttered something that sounded impolite, heaved a gusty sigh, and shambled through the door in the direction of the lifts. Coran waved a hand at him. “Wrong way, old chap. The Castle's power core is down at the moment, and I've had to seal the lifts. Gantars, you know. We'll have to take the stairs.”

Soluk gave him a flat, unfriendly look. There were nearly twenty levels between them and the infirmary, and not one of those stairwells had been designed with dragons in mind. The dragon turned the other way with a grunt, and Coran let out a relieved breath. He knew full well that they'd have this day out of his hide later, but he'd gotten them moving, and that was enough of a triumph right now to suit him just fine.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I say it a lot, but there just aren't enough words in the world to say thank you to everyone who gives kudos or leaves an encouraging comment. Everyone has been so kind, and we really appreciate it. It keeps us going as we make the rest of the household wonder at our sanity, listening to our mad laughter and random one-liners as we plot more ways to get our favorite characters in trouble. ^_^


	27. The Hunt Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick warning here to remind everyone that this fic has a tag for graphic violence. Admittedly we've had that up for a while, but I don't want to unpleasantly surprise anyone with anything potentially triggering. So if life or death battles with giant carnivorous space spiders might be too much, please take care of yourself.

Chapter 27: The Hunt Begins

 

Unregarded in the infirmary, the healpod had completed its cycle and had released its occupant back out into the world right on time. Unfortunately, that occupant had come out totally disoriented and had crumpled to the floor in a heap, desperately trying to scrape up his scattered thoughts and memories into something that made sense. Someone had removed his armor and left him wearing nothing but some sort of body-sleeve, and that was worrying. On the other hand, he wasn't freezing to death and his right arm was no longer a solid mass of agony. He felt a little logy and there was a strange taste in the back of his throat, but he could think now, and move without being dragged along like a child's toy. He rubbed at his neck with one trembling hand and nearly burst into tears from the intensity of his relief when he did not feel the hard insect body that had been wrapped around his throat. It all came back to him in a rush at that point. The terrible shock that had knocked him to the floor when the _Night Terror_ had broken his ship in half. Trying to defend what was left of it against an enemy that he couldn't even see clearly, or at all. That horrible moment when a blur in the air had grabbed his wrist, crushing his blaster and yanking him out from behind the fallen support beam that he'd taken cover behind. How that invisible monster had swung him high into the air and had slammed him to the decking hard enough to snap his bones like twigs. The insect thing that had gripped his windpipe in its clawed feet and the prick of the stinger that had turned his muscles to jelly and his bones to ice. Being slung over a scaly back and carried helplessly away. Being dumped into a freezing cubicle and left there, paralyzed, terrified, and in great pain for hours and hours while nightmare creatures grinned hungrily at him with fangs as long as his fingers. Hearing them hissing to him in their echoing voices of how they would skin him alive and eat him, still living, and then chain his ghost to their mother's heart along with the thousands and thousands of previous unfortunates. How he was doomed to be a slave forever to an undying horror, beyond the reach of any hope of help.

That had not happened. _It had not happened,_ he thought, groping awkwardly at the cool decking. Something had changed. The monsters had stopped gloating and had gone away, and then one of them had come back, and had tied his hands and pulled him out of the cubicle, forcing him to walk on aching and unsteady legs into somewhere else. He hadn't been able to see too clearly at that point, and it had been so cold that every breath had cut into his lungs like knives. He'd heard voices that hadn't been echoing whispers, seen shapes that hadn't been monsters, and he had been drawn away into... into somewhere warmer. He remembered a woman's voice speaking soothingly to him, sitting him down and giving him something warm to drink. He licked his lips reflexively now, still able to taste the savory broth at the corners of his mouth. After that... after that... yes, that was when his armor had been taken away, and his blurry eyes had seen a Galra woman piling it in a corner. He'd been allowed to lie down then, and a lid had closed over him, and he'd dropped into a deep and peaceful sleep.

And now?

He raised his head and looked around, realizing that this was not the place that he had been in earlier. It was a much larger room, circular, and strangely still and dim, as though it had been abandoned for centuries. The healpod he'd been in was vertical rather than horizontal, and the technology was completely unfamiliar to him. He'd been rescued from the Hoshinthra, that was obvious, but he looked to have been stolen again, by whom, he had no idea. That only confused him even more; he was only a grunt soldier with eight years in service to the Emperor's military, and had never risen to any sort of rank or even gained the attention of his superiors. His Lineage, what there was of it, was as common as dirt and had no influence with the higher-ups at all. Why would anyone have gone to so much trouble for him, and then had brought him here and left him alone and completely unguarded?

And had healed his injuries, he mused as he struggled upright. The broken bones had knitted, the bruises and scrapes were gone, and he hadn't been drugged. He was hungry, though. It had been a very long time since breakfast, and while that mug of broth had been welcome, it had worn off long ago. Perhaps this place had a kitchen, or perhaps a storeroom, or even a vending machine that he could break open. So thinking, he heaved himself to his feet and stumbled toward the door.

Whatever this place was, he thought later, it was very big and amazingly empty, and seemingly made up of corridors lined with locked doors. He was pretty sure that they were doors. There was something that looked to be a lift, but that was locked, too. He was starting to form a horrible suspicion that he was in one of the “maze”-type computer games that he'd played when he was small, where you were kidnapped and dropped in the middle of a labyrinth and made to solve puzzles and find keys in an attempt to get out. He wondered vaguely if there would be ghosts and monsters in this game, too; the place certainly felt haunted, and there were odd noises in the walls. Skitterings and scratchings that could easily be the local vermin, or it could be something else entirely. A faint, hollow-sounding voice, sounding a little like a man's but with an odd accent could be heard at intervals, and there were low growls and rumbles as well that suggested that something very large and irritable was lurking around the place somewhere. It was enough to give him chills—he hadn't emerged from his nightmare yet, and it wasn't long before he was convinced that there would be something ghastly awaiting him just around the next corner.

Galra, being predators, did not take well to being threatened, and tended to attack when they were upset. Anger began to mingle with fear in his mind, and despite his bad situation, something in his instincts whispered, _maybe if I attack it first..._

He gathered his courage and leaped around the corner, fists raised and ready to do battle. To his surprise, there was actually something there. It was a small, plump, yellowish creature with sleepy-looking eyes, large round ears, and a long thin tail. He stared at it suspiciously; it looked harmless, but he'd heard stories from the old sergeants that warned him against trusting first impressions. Any minute now, that fat little thing might sprout poison fangs and twenty writhing tentacles. Or summon a horde of friends to eat him alive. On the other hand, it might just be a harmless rodent, and he was hungry enough to eat six of those raw.

It squeaked at him. He flinched, and wondered whether or not it might be faster than he was. Nothing that cute could possibly be safe to be around. On the _other_ other hand, it looked too sleek and well-fed to be anything other than someone's pet. Maybe he could follow it to wherever the food was...?

Assuming that _that_ wasn't a big pile of people bones. Well, there was no harm in asking.

“You wouldn't happen to eat people, would you?” he said, his voice rasping hollowly in the empty corridor.

The creature squeaked again, and even gestured what looked like a negative at him.

Could something that small be an intelligent creature? He was tired, hungry, confused, and feeling slightly dizzy, and the idea struck him as amusingly absurd. Maybe he _was_ dreaming, and all of this would vanish like morning mist any time now. Of course, what might be awaiting him in the waking world might not be at all pleasant, so perhaps he should make the most of it while he could.

“If you say so,” he said, stepping carefully forward and reaching a hand down toward the tiny creature. “If you could lead me to where the snacks are--”

“ _OI!”_ the outraged shout behind him nearly sent him tipping over onto the floor, and suddenly he wasn't alone. _“Hands off of that, you miserable blaggard! Surrender at once!”_

He reacted instinctively, whirling around and driving a fist at the larger threat, which ducked quite handily out of the way. His new opponent was slimmer than he was, possessed a head and mustache of fearsomely orange hair, but was otherwise very manlike. It was also solid and real—not a ghost, not a monster, not a hologram sent to harass him by some evil games-master, and it was with a shuddering sense of relief that he let his battle-training take over. At last, something that he could hit! He snarled and lunged forward, meeting the alien's attack with one of his own. The alien was fast, and strong, and knew a good deal about unarmed combat. This was gratifying, even though it sapped his already limited store of energy. He would have to do something that would take the alien out soon or--

“ _ **GRONK!”**_

The mind-boggling bellow reminded him that there had been large-animal noises earlier, although he didn't have time to consider that any further. All of a sudden, something huge and spiky loomed out of the shadows behind his opponent, and a massive clawed paw slammed into his chest, knocking him to the floor and pinning him there. He let out a thin cry of terror as the scaly jaws opened, showing huge ivory fangs.

“Oh, really now, Tilla, I nearly had him,” the alien protested.

The monster grunted derisively, but snapped its jaws shut and began sniffing him all over, and to his horror a second one appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. How could anything so big move so quietly? Those huge claws should have scraped and rattled on the decking like a whole percussion section, but they'd made less noise than the little rodent had. That creature had clambered up onto the first monster's shoulder and was watching him with interest. The second monster lowered its head for a sniff as well, and it didn't do his nerves any good to hear the delicate sneezes and girl-cub giggling that followed.

“Well, that's hopeful,” the alien said as the big paw lifted off of his chest. “Consider yourself on probation for the moment, sir. Frankly, I'd rather have your help right now than have to lock you up somewhere.”

The soldier sat up and got his first good look at his strange companions, and realized that he'd seen this person somewhere before. On a wanted poster, come to think of it, along with...

“The Paladins,” he said in a dry, disbelieving whisper. “You're with the Paladins.”

The orange-haired man twirled his mustache and gave him a wry smile. “Quite right. One of their trainers, as a matter of fact, and Navigator-in-Chief of the Castle of Lions. It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.”

The soldier swallowed hard and looked up at the two spiky creatures, who blinked multiple blue eyes affably at him. “And these... the dragons. The Rogue Witch's dragons. One of these tore apart half of the Center, and turned Commander Sendak into a pile of ashes!”

“No, no, people always get that wrong,” the man chided him mildly. “That was Lizenne, Pidge, and Allura, all muddled together by an effective if desperate spell. Not too sure of the fine detail myself, but apparently it was either that or turn into a Druid. Not something you'd want to do every day, or so I'm told. Tilla and Soluk here were right here in the Castle the whole time.”

“The Castle,” the soldier echoed numbly, realizing that events had turned far stranger than he had feared. “I'm in the Castle. With the Lions?”

“'Fraid so,” the man said, offering him a hand up. “Don't even think of trying to steal them, by the way. The ship's damaged and can't fly at the moment, and the Lions themselves have grown so close to their pilots that they'll probably resist any attempts in that direction all by themselves. That's sentient machines for you. In any case, we've got more important things to worry about right now.”

The soldier accepted the proffered help, knowing full well that he needed it right now. “The Emperor is willing to kill the universe to get his hands on those things. What could be more important than that?”

There was a heavy impact somewhere nearby that made the floor shake and the dragons grunt uneasily. “Right now? That, in my personal opinion,” the man said matter-of-factly. “We've got Gantarash inviting themselves over for dinner, and I'd prefer that they didn't.”

The soldier stared at him in horror and whispered, “Gantarash?”

“Alas, yes.” The man waved a hand down the hall. “Terribly pushy fellows, and with dreadful manners. We need to hold them off until the others get back, and I've no idea how long that will take. How 'bout we agree on a truce for now, the better to not wind up as the main course, eh?” He offered his hand again, this time in partnership. “Agreed?”

The soldier hesitated, but not for long. Far too many things had demonstrated a fervent desire to eat him lately, and this was his best and only chance of avoiding that. He grasped the man's hand and shook it. “Agreed. For now, anyway.”

The man smiled appreciatively. “Of course. I'm Coran, by the way.”

The soldier nodded, still struggling with a sense of surreality. “I'm Vennex. Um... do we have time to get a snack?”

Coran gave him a considering look. “Hmm. You do look a little pale around the scales. Can't have you collapsing mid-epic battle. Sure thing, the kitchen's only a few levels down. Hunk—that's the yellow Paladin—is a very good cook and always has something nice in the cooler. I think that Modhri keeps a spare set of clothing on that level, too. Come on.”

Lured irresistibly by the possibility of both survival and food, Vennex followed.

 

Keith came awake with a grunt and a moan, the taste that Lance had named “backwards” in his mouth and an odd medley of smells in his nostrils. He smelled dirt and alien greenery, and a whiff of something that reminded him of the dumpsters out back behind the lunchroom at his middle school. One of the school bullies had tried to toss him into one of those on his first day there, he remembered. Even then, Keith had been stronger than the other kids, and the resulting trip to the Principal's office had marked that day in his memory as one of both triumph and defiance. It hadn't been the last by any means. He'd been a fighter from day one, and at least now he knew why. Galra blood in his veins, Galra instincts in his heart, all the genetic gifts from his Galra mother...

“Mom!” Keith jerked upright, looking around frantically for his team.

There was no one within sight, and he had been left lying on the forest floor. He was still wearing his armor, although its power was still offline, and his bayard was resting nearby on a patch of what wasn't exactly pine needles. He grabbed it up with a gasp of relief, although it didn't activate when he tried to extend the sword. “Damn,” he muttered quietly, and reached around his back to where he carried the knife that his mother had given him.

That was still there, he was surprised to see, as sharp and bright as ever. He was still armed, his armor would still offer some protection, and there was absolutely nothing that could fully block the Lion-bond. He and the others had proven that by rescuing Shiro.

A strident, high-pitched, insectlike chitter startled him, and he whirled around to see a small device hovering nearby. It produced a holoscreen, and he stared in fascination and disgust at the image that appeared upon it. Pidge had described the former Captain Plosser's foul pet in considerable detail, and he had formed an impression of a big, ugly, hairy, stinky, maneating, half-arachnid semi-animal. This was no animal. It was indeed big, ugly, and covered with a thick coat of dark red bristles; he didn't doubt that it stank, its kind were well-documented carnivores, and it certainly looked like a cross between a yeti and a tarantula. The eight protruding spider eyes glittered with a predatory intelligence, however, and it moved with grace and coordination. It wore a pair of four-legged trousers, a four-armed, long-sleeved shirt, and a tunic in brightly-colored silks, sashes and medals of rank, and a sword belt and long knives that showed a very high level of craftsmanship. The only thing that might have suggested barbaric behavior was its jewelry. It wore a belt made from someone's spinal column, the vertebrae strung together with gold and silver links; bracelets and armbands made from the small bones of other people's hands and feet graced its wrists and arms, and it wore several long necklaces of fangs, many of which were the right size and shape to have come from Galra. The thought made Keith touch his tongue to his own slightly-longer-than-average canines in sympathy.

“ _Feast meat,”_ the apparition said in a deep-toned, rasping voice, _“we thank you for this gift of flesh. Know that you are to be honored with a full Ritual Hunt, to please the Mother of the Gods in Her recent Manifestation. In this Feasting Ground will you face us upon equal terms, skill against skill; no kill made by either party will be wasted. It is only right that this is so, and let the greater predator prevail.”_

The screen clicked off, and the device zipped away into the trees. “Crud,” he muttered, and followed it.

He had to stop a little time later; the little drone flitted out into an opening in the trees, and he lost it in the glare of the setting sun. The peach-and-amber-colored light glinted oddly on the air, and he skidded to a halt and stared at the sky. That long-dead Jensilgen king had chosen the prettiest spot that he could find for his garden space, and then had told his landscapers to pretty it up further. He'd come out of the trees atop a sculpted ridge, where a burbling stream poured over a series of shallow terraces into a small lake below that mirrored the clouds beautifully. It also allowed him to see the vast extent of the gardens, and the force-shield that stretched over the entire enclosure. From the look of it, the Gantars must have embedded the generators into the top of the garden wall, and there would be no escape that way. His eyes were drawn inexorably to the tower on the other side of the garden, and he saw that part of the palace itself was within that dome. He'd have to head over there to be sure, or better yet, find the others, but it was a pretty good bet that the shield controls were in that building somewhere. Fortunately, locating his team was easy.

“Patience yields focus,” he muttered to himself, reaching inward for the comforting warmth of the Lion-bond.

There it was, as strong as ever, and Allura was the closest. Turning in her direction, he took off running.

 

Shiro was also on the move, homing in on Hunk and mentally blessing his ability to detect his team through the Lion-bond. Their comms were dead, and they were stuck in a story that he hadn't even thought about since middle school. Somewhere in this overgrown wilderness were the three Galra as well, although he wasn't as worried about them as he might be. They were competent fighters after all, and natural predators, and in at least one case, all he'd need to do was follow the explosions. _That may be true for some of the team as well,_ he thought with a smile. He remembered his team's first encounter with the Olkari, and how easily Pidge had soaked up what they'd had to teach her. That had been more than a year ago. Who knew what she was capable of now? He wasn't sure what the others could bring to a situation like this—hell, _he_ wasn't sure what he could do, beyond hit things with sticks or get hunches, but they'd think of something. They always did.

He came to a panting halt and had to lean against a tree for a moment to catch his breath, cursing the weakness in his body. The others had warned him about this—that working magic could easily take more out of a person than was safe, and he'd already been underweight when Lotor had shown up. According to the infirmary's scanners, he'd traded nearly three pounds of muscle mass that he could ill-afford to lose for that one tiny hint that had saved them from a very possible defeat and capture. _Worth it,_ he thought grimly. Having been in enemy hands twice, he would go to any lengths to avoid a third time. Hunk's careful maintenance of his personal girth now made a lot more sense, which brought a smile to Shiro's lips. How many people on Earth would envy him right now? He could eat anything he wanted, and in sumo wrestler-sized portions, and he would never gain more than a few ounces here and there. Precognition as a dieting option—lose those love handles while reading tea leaves!

Shiro shook his head to clear it, aware that he was losing focus. _Take it easy,_ he told himself sternly, setting out again at a brisk walk and feeling the weight of his unpowered armor. _Conserve your strength. Use the time to study your situation and think of ways to turn it against the enemy. At least this time we know the game plan._

He flinched when a strange noise rang through the air, a loud rattling hoot that sounded for all the world like an oversized referee's whistle. While he was aware that anything was possible in alien biology, that sound hadn't come from an animal.

“Game's started,” he muttered under his breath, and quickened his pace a little more.

 

Lance jerked at that sound as well, and reflexively looked around for Coach Henderson, even though that man was thousands of lightyears away right now, and had retired two years before Lance had joined Galaxy Garrison in any case. Not that it mattered to his instincts; he still had the occasional nightmare about his high school gym teacher, who had been a large, loud, muscular ex-Marine and a card-carrying soccer fanatic. The man was a classic right out of a bad sports movie, he knew now. Coach Henderson's holy mission and purpose in life had been to discover the next Olympic-grade player among the skinny, half-grown boys in his classes, generally through a process of attrition. Lance, who had been bony, uncoordinated, and high-strung at the time, soon developed a terror of whistles, a healthy dread of anyone who had one, and an even healthier turn of speed. He'd also developed a huge aversion to team sports, which had disappointed some of his uncles. Uncle Ernesto in particular had observed his long legs and had hoped for a professional athlete in the family. It was just a shame that “space hero” wasn't a recognized Olympic sport. He'd win gold in that one for sure.

His rattled mind wanted to consider that instead of having to deal with his current situation—single and team bouts, weight classes, the various grades of special powers, how the judges would grade form, skill, choreography, heroic posturing, and the best use of light-reflecting-off-of-pearly-white-teeth-( _“ting!”_ )... oh, yeah, and volume control of that traditional sound effect. And the inevitable scandals when the official space monster was caught doping, or somebody'd been illegally souping up their space armor, or some country had substituted robot doubles for their actual hero team, which was in jail for unspecified shenanigans that had resulted in the local red light district being burned to the ground...

_Shut up, brain,_ Lance thought as he used his Lion-bond to home in on Pidge.

_But I like red-light-district shenanigans,_ his brain pouted.

_Survive now, write bad fiction later,_ he admonished his selectively-overactive imagination. The internationally best-selling story of the Seventh Annual Space Hero Olympics, to say nothing of the epic memoirs of the Blue Voltron Paladin, would never be written if something devoured the author first.  _With mermaid shenanigans,_ that inappropriate part of his mind said hopefully,  _I like mermaid shenanigans._

_Shut up, brain,_ Lance thought sourly and ran on, his useless bayard weighing heavily in his hand.

According to his more unusual senses, Pidge had come to a halt nearby in a grove of large, gnarled trees. She was nowhere in sight when he arrived, however. “Pidge?” he called uncertainly, “where are you?”

Something that wasn't quite a walnut bounced off of his helmet, and he looked up to see a flicker of green among the salmon-colored foliage. “Get up here!” she hissed. “Gantars don't climb very well.”

“It won't stop them from cutting down the tree,” he pointed out. “Then what?”

There was a muttered curse from above, and then she came sliding down. “I keep thinking about the one that Plosser had, and it was pretty dumb. Does your bayard work?”

Lance waggled the inactive handgrip unhappily. “Nope. I don't know how they're doing it, but those guys have turned them off, and our armor, too. I tried calling Blue, but she either can't or won't come.”

Pidge nodded, brushing leaves off of her armor. “Me, too. If they've shut us down, then the Castle—even the Lions might be disabled, too. We'll need to find something to use as weapons. Coran did say that Alteans had to deal with Gantars ten thousand years ago, and Zaianne said that they've been stealing other people's tech. I'll bet that's how they figured out how to nullify aetheric machinery.”

“Wouldn't surprise me,” Lance sighed. “We need to find the others, too. Did you see anything while you were up there?”

“Yeah,” Pidge said grimly, starting off and waving at him to keep up. “We're in the palace garden, and there's a big force-dome over the whole thing. There's a lake in the middle, the palace is on the far side of the park, and a whole lot of ugly red things just came out of it a few minutes ago. I wish Yantilee was here.”

Lance could have done with some serious Elikonian backup, too. “He knows how to fight Gantars?”

“Yeah,” Pidge said. “Back when Admiral Zebaloon had him and the others working as mercenaries, they had to fight a lot of them. I got to watch him take down Plosser's, and it only took a minute or two.”

Lance considered that, remembering the enormous pirate captain. “I can believe it. Did he give you any pointers for dealing with the smart ones?”

She nodded. “Gantars are sort of weird. They're arthropods, but they've also got internal skeletons. It's not as strong as ours, but with the exoskeleton on the outside, it doesn't really need to be. They also don't see as well as we do, and their eyes pick up motion rather than shape, but their senses of smell and hearing are really sharp. They're fast, tough, and really strong. A good way to confuse them is to make yourself smell really strongly of something sharp—Litchvarian black mint is good for that, but we don't have any. Yantilee says that the best spots to hit them are the knees and belly, and if you can get at the place where their heads meet their shoulders—Gantars don't have necks like we do, it's more of a rotator socket—that's the best spot of all. You always want to take their heads off, because that's the only way to be sure that they're actually dead. They can survive practically anything else, and can regrow any body part except for the eyes and brain.”

“Yuck,” Lance observed, and then looked thoughtfully up at the long vines of a flowering creeper. “Knees, huh? Why the knees?”

“If you break their knees, they can't run,” Pidge said simply. “they're just a little bit brittle down there, and Gantars are heavy.”

Lance smiled wickedly. “You know, we could get in a little bola-whip practice. We never got around to hunting that yulpadi, and I'd sort of like to be ready for it.”

Pidge smiled broadly, her mouth watering a little at the thought of the best stew in the universe. “Genius,” she said, knocking him gently in the side with one fist. “Those vines look strong enough to use, and there are rocks all over... oh hey, check these out!”

They had just come upon a clump of low, gnarled little trees with broad, wrinkled leaves striped in orange and pink. Hanging under the odd foliage were woody, golden-tan rounds, large nuts the size and shape of doughnuts, and as hard and heavy as ironwood. “These are perfect,” Lance said, hefting one ring-shaped nut experimentally. “Sort of nice to look at, too. Maybe we should take a few back with us, and see if we can get them to grow in the hydroponic deck, or maybe the envirodeck.”

Pidge snickered and pulled down a few vines, tugging hard on them to test flexibility and strength. “Organically-grown, gluten-free, free-range, vegan weaponry. I like it. I wonder if we can eat them, too?”

Lance picked up a fallen nut and banged it against a nearby piece of masonry. The nut was unharmed, but the carved stone lost a large chip. “Probably not. Who cares? If they can keep me from getting eaten, then they're my favorite nuts in the whole world.”

“Mine, too,” Pidge said, taking the nut from his hand and knotting one end of a vine around it. “Help me make a bunch of these, will you? I think that we're going to need all that we can get.”

 

Allura felt that she had just about had enough. The recording left for her by that little drone and a glance at the force-shield dome overhead had told her all that she needed to know. Gantarash! Of all the things that the universe could throw at them, why did it have to be Gantarash? Her cousins had frightened her half to death with tales of those man-eating marauders on scary-story nights when she was small, and her father and his team had often come back depressed, angry, and off their feed after having to deal with them. So much so, in fact, that King Alfor had not wanted to talk about those adventures, and normally he had been happy to tell war stories all night. Even Coran didn't like to talk about them, and she was beginning to see why. Gantars were difficult foes, she could infer that much from their silence on the subject, but she had never heard anything to the effect that they had found a way to disable aetherically-augmented machinery. Where had they picked up technology that could deactivate her bayard and armor, and possibly ground the Castle as well? The Lions certainly hadn't come running to help!

At least she wouldn't have to face the enemy alone. Keith was nearby, moving steadily toward her, and she was closing the distance between them as fast as she could. Pidge and Lance had found each other as well, and Shiro... Shiro had come to a halt, possibly to rest. Hunk was homing in on him, so she didn't have to worry too much about them. Lizenne and Zaianne were presumably running around as well, and she knew very well how dangerous those two women could be. It was Modhri she was truly worried about. Her adoptive uncle hadn't been wearing anything more protective than a standard repair tech's coverall, and had only a few belt-pouches of small tools on hand. She was fairly sure that he'd been carrying one of his smaller blasters along and his aim was very good, but she didn't know if he'd been allowed to keep it. It was one thing to leave an enemy with a weapon that didn't work, she knew very well, and quite another to leave him with one that did. While the Gantar's recording had stated that the hunters and the hunted would be reasonably equal, she was not willing to trust the honor of a dedicated cannibal.

She had just rounded the crumbling remains of what might once have been a pleasure pavilion when the stink of rotting garbage assailed her nose, and she danced away as something huge burst out of the bushes in front of her. Pidge had not been exaggerating when she had described these creatures, Allura thought, backing away from the massive Gantar. If anything, she'd either been understating it, or the one she'd kept company with on the _Quandary_ had been small for its kind. This one could have made four of her. Indeed, it was possible that this one was a giant, and was obviously very proud of its strength; so much so that it had elected not to wear much in the way of armor. A sort of collar-like yoke had been strapped on over its shoulders to protect the back of its head and very short neck, it bore an articulated plate over its belly, and spiked knee-guards adorned its legs, but that was pretty much it. Oh, the straps that held its armor on had been decorated with glinting bosses and small banners, but other than that, the creature was essentially naked.

And in possession of several large, broad-bladed short swords, she couldn't help but notice. Eight dark insect eyes gleamed greedily at her, and the fanged mandibles dribbled unguessable fluids. “Feast meat,” it rasped, raising its swords in salute, “I thank you for this gift of flesh.”

Allura turned and ran.

The Gantar let out a stridulating whistle and pursued, its four powerful legs covering the ground in long, swift strides. How was she going to deal with this thing, she thought desperately; she had no working weapons, and only half the limbs. It probably wouldn't be able to swim, but neither would she unless she took her armor off, and the lake was too far away in any case.

Her sharp eyes spotted something that offered a height advantage, at least. Someone had built a little stone building here, and had surrounded it with a small grove of smooth-barked trees. The building had survived, more or less, because the trees had taken over, winding their huge, hosepipe roots all over it in an impenetrable tangle before shooting toward the sky. There were ridges in the bark that suggested handholds as well, and she put on a burst of speed. Heavy blades crunched into the woody roots a breath behind her as she clambered up them as fast as she could go, and again as she scaled the nearest trunk. It was hard going in her unpowered armor, but she gritted her teeth and won her way up onto a thick branch.

The Gantar, for all that it had eight limbs, did not seem to want to climb up after her, and was circling the base of the clump of trees now, looking for a way to knock her down. Sheathing a pair of its swords, it scooped up a rock, tossed it thoughtfully in one grasper a few times, and then hurled it right at her head. Only her fast reflexes saved her, and she felt the wind of its passage on her face.

“Cannot run, feast meat,” the Gantar hissed, scooping up another rock. “Cannot hide. Come down and prove your strength.”

Allura ducked as the second stone sailed past her. “I would rather not,” she told it.

It chittered a laugh. “I insist. Rejoice that we have found you. The Ship-Lord now knows that your kind still exist. We will find that hidden colony and protect it. It is both a sorrow and a joy that there is only one other of your kind here. Had you come with more, you would have had the honor of becoming a brood-queen. You have not, so we may rejoice in your flesh.”

Allura's heart iced over in horror. It was bad enough that Quolothis was being held prisoner by the Empire, but this? On one of the few occasions that her mother had hosted her father's teammates, she had overheard Gyrgan talking grimly with Zarkon about this sort of thing. Small worlds, he'd said, each with a colony of rare peoples inhabiting them, denied spacecraft and heavily patrolled by the Gantarash, and expected to do nothing but breed up more feast meat for them. She recalled that after that day, the Voltron force had set out for parts unknown in defiance of orders, and had been gone for over a month. Her father had been very tired when they had returned, and thinner, with angry eyes and a new scar that had stretched from one shoulder to the opposite hip. His armor had taken corresponding damage as well, and his temper had been strained to the breaking point. Numerous delegates and diplomats had been pestering Allura's mother about the team's disappearance, and had tried to berate him for going off without warning anybody. That had been the first time that she had ever seen her noble father really lose his temper at anyone, and she could still hear the echoes of his wrathful voice in her memory. _How dare you insist that Voltron babysit your pleasure-yachts,_ he had demanded, _when whole populations of innocents have been reduced to breeding stock, their only purpose in life to produce more of themselves in order to slake the appetites of monsters? How_ dare _you demand that my team stand aside and allow those cannibals to feed on other people's children?_

“How dare you?” Allura snarled in echo of her father's fury and feeling her own rise in answer. “How _dare_ you?”

It whistled jauntily at her. “Our God has granted us this right. A tithe of flesh from all other peoples. All others, feast meat. Come down and accept this fate.”

She opened her mouth to tell the creature exactly what she thought of its “rights”, but Keith said it better than she could with a long, furious, guttural roar of rage. The Gantar whirled with a rasp of surprise, looking around for the source; Keith burst out of the bushes behind it at top speed, ducked under a slash from one of those short swords, and jabbed at its forward hip joint. There was a crunch, a gout of greenish blood, and the Gantar squealed shrilly in pain as it lurched on an injured leg. Allura remembered that Keith had been pitted against creatures far larger than himself before, and with stakes just as high, and watched in fascination as he danced around his foe, looking for another opening, his mother's sword glinting in his hand.

The Gantar came after him, jerking the two sheathed blades out of its sword belt and slashing at him, turning nimbly whenever he tried to flank it despite the wounded leg. Allura shook off her surprise and gathered her legs beneath her; skilled as Keith was with a blade, he was still much smaller than his opponent, and would need help. So thinking, she waited until he had drawn the Gantar around so that it was directly beneath the branch she sat on, and when she judged the time to be right, she dropped. Her feet struck the monster directly between its shoulders, driving it to its knees and knocking a pair of swords from its hands. Gagging at its filthy reek, she clung to the straps of its armor with one hand, wrapped her legs around its upper torso between the arms, and did her best to claw out its eyes with the other hand. Something crunched unpleasantly beneath her fingers.

It globbered wrathfully, clawing at her with its upper graspers, its long nails scraping nastily over her backplates, but not quite able to get a grip on her. Keith darted forward again, his blade crunching through the chitin to one side of its belly armor, and slicing lightning-quick at the back of the rear knee. The Gantar howled and keeled over, clutching at the gut wound; Allura fell from its shoulders and rolled, picking up a handy rock. This, she smashed into the Gantar's head, followed by Keith, who darted in again and jammed his blade down underneath the steel neckguard. The Gantar had time for one more squawk of dismay before its head dropped off, and it quivered all over and went limp.

“Hi,” Keith panted with a fierce smile. “Thanks for the help.”

“And I thank you for the same,” she replied, giving the dead alien's head a kick that sent it crashing into the underbrush. “That thing... it said that--”

“I heard,” Keith said, wiping his sword off on the Gantar's banners. “They can look all they like, and if they find Quolothis, they'll have their work cut out for them. Remember how many fleets the Empire's got guarding it?”

Allura paused to think about that, and giggled. “You're quite right. I'm perfectly willing to let one enemy do battle with another, and wear themselves out in the meantime! We'll still want to keep that in mind when we go after that system, and make preparations for the worst-case scenario.”

He nodded, sliding his blade back into its sheath. “Yeah. That's for later, though. Have you seen any sign of Mom?”

“Not yet, nor have I found any trace of the others,” Allura admitted. “I'm worried about them, Modhri especially.”

“Me too,” Keith said, looking around at the surrounding forest. “He's only got—ah!”

Another stridulating whistle cut through the air some distance away, followed by the telltale sound of a blaster being fired. “Come on!” Allura said, and took off in that direction, Keith close behind her.

 

Hunk heard those sounds too, off in the distance, and he didn't like them. Instead, he concentrated on pushing his way through the thick undergrowth toward Shiro, who had stopped moving. He liked that fact even less; Shiro had always been a pillar of strength in his mind, and he didn't like being reminded of the fact that that pillar had taken some bad structural hits recently. Especially right now, with a whole crowd of space monsters out to get them, and their weapons didn't work. Hunk had compromised there, using a handy vine to tie his bayard to his waist and having found a nice sturdy branch to hit things with if he had to. Many of his distant and not-so-distant ancestors had used big clubs to great effect in the past, and he was determined to give as good as he got.

In the meantime, he could use it to help him get through the thickets that seemed to have taken over this side of the park. Big, nasty, thorny, ankle-grabbing thickets with bright red leaves that smelled overwhelmingly of bubblegum. He was just on the verge of swearing off of Treble-Bubble forever when he half-shoved, half-fell through the last hedgerow and staggered into a clearing. It had been some sort of picnic space, maybe, a natural level spot on the high ground, with an excellent view of the waterfall on one side and the palace on the other. Someone had laid down a large, circular stone floor here in an intricate design that the local weeds hadn't yet been able to scatter, and surrounded it with a colonnade of carved pillars. If there had been a roof, it was long gone and many of the pillars had fallen; on one of those sat a familiar figure. Hunk hurried over, seeing to his dismay that Shiro looked worn out already. To his relief, Shiro looked up at his approach and smiled.

“Hi,” he said.

“Shiro,” Hunk puffed, “I'm so glad I found you. Are you okay? You haven't been chewed on by anything, right? We're stuck in the Most Dangerous Game, only with big spider-guys instead of a crazy safari hunter, and I want out!”

“I'm fine, Hunk, just tired,” Shiro said, hauling himself to his feet. “The armor was heavy enough when it still had power, is all.”

Hunk immediately offered his shoulder as support. “Ooh, yeah, that's bad. Just lean on me, and we'll find the others. You know, boss, we were working on getting you up to some real exercise soon, but we weren't expecting this.”

Shiro snorted a laugh. “I wasn't either. We'll just have to cope. Pidge and Lance have found each other, and so have Keith and Allura, I've felt that much through the bond. I have no idea where Lizenne, Modhri, or Zaianne are.”

Hunk looked around forlornly. “Me neither. Keith and Allura were really angry just now, though, and there were some big-bug noises from over there.” Hunk pointed off in the general direction of the bottom of the ridge. “I think they fought a Gantar down there, and somebody's blaster went zap, too.”

“That's hopeful,” Shiro said, getting a grip on Hunk's shoulder. “Let's go. The sooner we're all back together, the better.”

“No objection there,” Hunk said, heading in the direction that the sounds of a fight had come from.

Fortunately for them, the Jensilgen landscapers had made sure that every part of the garden was easily accessable, and time and weather had not damaged those carefully-laid paths too much. Aside from having to fight their way through the occasional overgrowth of brushwood, it wasn't too difficult, and even turned out to be a good thing. The other Gantarash hunters in the area had heard the sounds of battle as well, and had come to have a look. Shiro and Hunk were forced to crouch down in the undergrowth while three huge, bristly, and heavily-armed Gantars inspected the still body of a fourth, which stank even worse than the live ones.

“The feast meat is clever,” one of them observed approvingly, rolling the corpse over and inspecting the damage. “Two fighters against this one, working together. The one in red, I think. It had a knife.”

A second one bent down to sniff at its dead fellow. “The pink one as well. It smells so sweet... I will savor its flesh and keep a bone to remember it by. It had no active weapon, but it has strength.”

“And courage,” the third said, retrieving a round, hairy object from a nearby thicket. “See? It clawed half of Zok-Kikk-Vekk's eyes out. A worthy kill. The Clan's honor is not diminished. I shall savor his flesh as well, and keep a bone for his remembrance.”

The first one gurgled eagerly. “It will be a great feast. Have you found the trail?”

The third gestured off to the left. “That way, toward where the Galra male was left, and easily-followed. They have little experience in covering their tracks.”

“Shiro, what are we gonna do?” Hunk whispered miserably. “Keith and Allura handled one just fine, but three? Look at the swords those guys have got!”

Shiro had indeed been eyeing the weaponry, and a few of the smaller hunting knives that one of them was carrying looked as though they would fit his hands. “We could rush them. If I can get my hands on one of that one's knives, we'll be able to do some damage.”

Hunk humphed. “Getting one is going to be a problem. See how they move? They're a lot faster than they look.”

“They're bugs. Bugs are brittle,” Shiro whispered back. “They also aren't wearing much armor, which tells me where their weak points are. Knees, belly, neck. You're stronger than you used to be, Hunk, and a lot more agile than you let on. And you've got that big stick.”

Hunk looked at his big stick, which was looking more and more inadequate by the minute. “It's not all that good a stick.”

Shiro frowned, watching the Gantars carefully as they trussed up their dead comrade for transport. “If it can break the knees of the one with the hunting knives, then it's the best stick on the planet. All I need is one. Get ready.”

Hunk groaned in protest, but gathered himself for a rush.

It was more of a lurch in his unpowered armor, but it did the trick. The Gantars had their backs turned at the moment, being busy with their dead comrade, and Hunk was able to deliver a couple of telling strikes with his club before the Gantar knocked him off of his feet with a swing of its powerful arms. Shiro ducked in beneath the Gantar's opposite arms and pulled a large hunting knife from its sheath. The grip was a bit awkward for his comparatively much smaller hands, but a blade was a blade, and he jammed it hard into the Gantar's forward hip, jerking hard on the hilt so that it cracked the entire joint across. The Gantar screamed, and Shiro was forced to abandon the knife and dodge away before a pair of enormous fists could smash him to the ground. By this time, Hunk was back on his feet and circling a second foe. Gantarash were very spiderlike, Shiro observed, but they were more like crabs in some ways. That bristly shell was indeed good armor, but only against slashing attacks. A good stab or a strike with a blunt object could crack it without too much trouble. Unfortunately, like their seagoing cousins, it gave them enormous strength. The one he'd stabbed was now dragging itself toward him, frothing in fury, and the third one was trying to get behind him. He was forced to dive out of the way as the pair of them struck at him at once, and when he tried to leap to his feet, his knees buckled beneath him. Shiro realized that he just didn't have the stamina for this.

There was a crackle in the nearby underbrush, and something slim and dark cannoned out of hiding, used the dead Gantar as a springboard, and leaped at the pair of Gantarash that were menacing Shiro. The fading sunlight glinted off of a dark blade as it essayed a pair of finely-calculated slashes, and both aliens dropped headless and twitching to the ground a moment later. The remaining Gantar quickly lost interest in Hunk and charged the greater foe, globbering wrathfully. As silently and gracefully as a great hunting cat, the Blade of Marmora evaded its rush, drawing it away from the two Paladins before making her move. The dark blade flickered, and there was a crunch of shattering chitin, and the Gantar collapsed screeching as its torso was split open. Another glint of luxite alloy, and the Gantar lost its head. The Blade warrior paused dramatically against the darkening air, sword raised and ready, but the foe had been entirely vanquished.

Hunk leaned on his stick with a breathless laugh. “Have I told you today how much I like having you around, Super Scary Ninja Space Aunt?”

Zaianne relaxed, her mask blurring away from her elegant features. “You just have. Shiro, are you all right?”

“Been better,” he grunted, hauling himself to his feet, swaying a bit. “I'm kind of looking forward to when you'll be teaching me how to do that.”

He'd waved a hand at the reeking carnage strewn all over the clearing, and she waggled a finger at him. “You shouldn't have tried to fight them, as understrength as you are. I cannot doubt your courage, my son, but I can question your intelligence! What possessed you to take on three at once?”

Hunk came over and pulled Shiro's arm over his shoulder to support him. “Keith and Allura got that first one, and these three were going to follow them. Modhri's over there somewhere, too. We kind of thought we'd save our guys the trouble, you know? Plus, this guy here had a sword that Shiro could use.”

Zaianne humphed and ventured over to the appropriate corpse, then pulled the knife out of the Gantar's body with a sickening crunch. “So I see,” she said thoughtfully, swinging the weapon a few times to get a feel for it. “They've been studying Heverlan ceremonial halberds, I think. A very efficient blade.”

“I thought so,” Shiro said, taking it back from her. “We had better find our team before anything else does. Allura and Keith are the closest, and if they've found Modhri already, we're ahead of the game.”

“Yeah,” Hunk said, “and then we should hook up with Pidge and Lance. They're heading our way right now, but I don't know where Lizenne is. You think she'll be okay?”

Zaianne laughed. “She ran feral for seven years in the grasslands of Zampedri, and is a powerful witch. I am not worried about her at all.”

Shiro nodded. “Let's get going, then. I'd rather not have to fight Gantars in the dark.”

“Not just yet,” Zaianne said, and turned back toward the corpses. There were a few more of those unsettling crunching noises, and she returned a few minutes later with a handful of small devices. “Transponders,” she told them, “embedded in the upper left arms. Gantars like to put force-shields around their ships to keep other peoples from damaging them, and these will get us past those.” Her fangs flashed in a ferocious grimace. “I will not have these creatures following us off of this planet.”

Hunk wrapped his free arm around her and hugged her tight. “I really, _really_ like having you around, Super Scary Ninja Space Aunt.”

She chuckled and patted his head affectionately. “What a dear boy you are.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the Talssenemai is a horrifying monster. So are the Gantarash, and so are Zarkon and Haggar. This entire fic series seems to be a guide to dealing with monsters of all shapes and forms.  
> ....I suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to go read Where The Wild Things Are.
> 
> Thanks as always for your comments and kudos! Spanch practically does a happy dance every time a notification pops up in her inbox, and it's great fun to watch her chair do a little jig along with her. And me? Well... *sneakily nudges something rather shrine-shaped behind the couch* I have my own ways of showing my enjoyment. ^_^;  
> See you all next chapter!


	28. All Together Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy April 1st, which I am using as a sign of spring approaching (not really here yet where I am, but I'll take any milestone I can get) since Spanch and I are way too lazy to think up any sort of prank. Have another chapter and enjoy your day, and Spanch and I will perhaps attempt to put some sort of April Fool's prank in the end notes or something.

Chapter 28: All Together Now

 

Someone had been leaving a trail of carnage through the woods. The first indicator that Pidge and Lance had that Gantars were not that person's favorite people had been left in plain view, where another of those delicate stone pavilions had recently lost a chunk of masonry. It was quite a large chunk, probably weighing in at a couple of tons, and the back half of a Gantar was sticking out from under it. “Simple, but effective,” Lance commented, and Pidge couldn't help but to agree.

The next one was another Gantar, or most of it. From the way that a dense clump of bushes on one side of that small clearing had been torn up and the sheets of moss that had been kicked away from the underlying stone path, the alien had come right through it, swinging all four battle-axes in the classic whirling vortex of death. Whatever had burst its cranium like a melon had not been impressed. _“Tahe Moq,”_ Pidge whispered, feeling the tell-tale aura over the shattered mess on the ground. “It's her.”

“Good,” Lance whispered back. “I want her on our side.”

They nearly missed the third one, which had met its end in what had probably been an ornamental water feature of some sort. The pool was small but very deep, full of strange water plants, and there had been a sort of miniature stone gazebo built over it. That had fallen down in large chunks, and only the single hairy spider leg sticking out of the sodden wreckage bore witness to the trap that had been laid there.

“Think she's in a bad mood?” Pidge asked.

“Could be,” Lance replied judiciously.

A long, raw-throated cry rang through the darkening air at that point, not quite like a mountain lion and not quite like a wolf, but definitely from something large, mammalian, and very, very angry. The two Paladins flinched at that sound, glanced nervously at each other, and headed toward the source of that call despite the protests of their own survival instincts. A loud chittering whistle from that same direction made them pick up speed, sending them dashing down a low path that took them into a section of woods where the trees were all huge, smooth-barked pillars, easily going up a hundred feet or more before sending out any branches. In better times, this would have been a place of mysterious, cathedral-like beauty, carrying that air of sacred serenity only possible in old-growth forests. Just now, as the shadows deepened into purple dusk, it was full of menace.

The path led down into a deep ravine, the walls held in place by great masses of interwoven roots, and then out into a round clearing paved with an intricate mosaic of colored stones. Deprived of the army of gardeners that had once kept this circle pristine, silvery-barked saplings were crowding the edges now, reaching hungry branches out to catch at the waist-high stone sconces placed at intervals around the edge. Once, those fancifully-carved alabaster objects had held lamps filled with scented oils; now dark, they obstructed the pair of Gantars that were trying to flush something out of the new growth. One of the spiderlike aliens was carrying a spear, and it scuttled from narrow space to narrow space, thrusting its weapon into the shrubbery. This was a young Gantar, being smaller than its companion and a lighter red in color; its elder, a huge, scarred, blood-colored individual with a lower arm still in the process of regenerating from some past battle, followed along indulgently behind it at a slower pace. Lance and Pidge took cover, each pulling a bola whip from the bundles they had knotted loosely over their shoulders. If Lizenne was out there, any help that they could give her would be welcome. Lance waited until the Gantars' backs were turned, then stepped out and raised his bola.

Something screeched like a cat-a-crags right above him, and he hit the ground reflexively when something large and dark sailed over his head. Lizenne, he realized, and she was charging the smaller Gantar with a big stick held above her head. The bigger Gantar let out a gurgling laugh and stepped away, allowing its junior the honor of facing the infuriated Galra female. The youngster galloped forward to meet her, spear at the ready. It jabbed at her, but far too soon—even if she hadn't leaped high into the air, its strike would have come up short by over a meter. Undaunted and chittering in excitement, the young Gantar leaped back a step, spear held up horizontally in its graspers to block her return strike.

Lizenne had something else in mind than simply braining the young fool, and her inhumanly high bound had been quite deliberate. Hurling the branch away at the last moment, she caught the spear in both hands on the way down, shouting a peculiar word as she did so. For a second, her feet flared gold, and she drove her long toe-claws down with all her weight behind them, right into the Gantar's belly.

There was a loud crunch, a louder scream, and a whimper from Lance, who had already had good reason to fear the Thing With The Thumbnails. The Thing With The Toenails would haunt his dreams for weeks, he was very sure.

Lizenne had the spear now, and her toe-claws struck sparks from the paving stones as she whirled it in a hissing arc through the twilight air; a bare second later, she had made sure that the young Gantar would grow no older. The older Gantar gave a wrathful roar and charged, bringing up three spiked maces to crush the Galra to jelly. There was a soft whickering sound, and the Gantar lurched, squawking in sudden surprise; a pair of bola whips had wrapped themselves around the Gantar's right legs, head, and upper-left arm, and it staggered around in a half-circle in its attempts to pull loose. Lizenne did not hesitate, and thrust her stolen spear into the narrow space beneath the armored yoke. Divested of its head, the second Gantar collapsed twitching to the stones.

Lizenne heaved a deep breath and leaned on the spear. “Whoever threw those, thank you. That creature would have been very difficult otherwise.”

“Are you okay?” Pidge asked, dashing up with Lance following at a safe distance. “We heard you yelling earlier, and saw your... um... leftovers.”

“You sounded really angry,” Lance added.

“I was, and still am.” Lizenne nodded, and gave the smaller Gantar's corpse a kick. “Would you believe that this was the only one out of that whole group that was carrying a weapon that I could use? You seem to be intact, at least, and your aim is improving. Where are the others? Something about this place is confusing my other sight, and I can't quite get a fix on them.”

“It's probably the aetheric damper that turned off our armor and bayards,” Pidge said, and looked worried. “Will that mess with Modhri's ward?”

Lizenne gestured a negative. “It shouldn't. It certainly hasn't interfered with the spells I've been casting. I know that Modhri's still alive. I just can't find him.” A worried look crossed her face, and then she gave a puzzled frown. “Your bayards don't work?”

“Pidge thinks that the Gantars have figured out how to disable Altean tech,” Lance said, knocking his knuckles on his breastplate. “All I know is that both have gone dead, and while I can still feel Blue, I can't call her.”

“Interesting,” Lizenne said, tapping the spear butt on the stones with a disappointing _thunk_ sound, quite unlike her own personal weapon. “There may be a way to counter that, but I'll need Allura to help me with it. Let me just get my bag, and we'll go and find the others.”

“Your... bag?” Pidge asked.

“My sample bag, remember? Some of those twigs and berries are very valuable,” Lizenne said, handing the spear to Lance and hurrying over to a particular bush. “I am not leaving this planet empty-handed unless I have to. Especially not since the Jensilgen homeworld has already been pretty much stripped of anything worthwhile; this garden may hold the last of their natural bounty.”

Pidge looked around at the rich growth of forest sadly. “Really?”

“Oh, yes, their homeworld was mostly desert to start with.” Lizenne hauled her satchel out of the underbrush and trotted back to reclaim the spear. “That planet has no oceans, just a few large salt lakes. All of the good growing land was tucked into deep mountain valleys and crowded in around oases and a few river systems, and the people spent most of their pre-spaceflight years finding ways to make the best of what little there was. Having the Empire show up and make a hash of all of their hard work did not help. Let's go.”

“Right,” Lance said, getting a grip on the Lion-bond. “Allura and Keith are closest, and--”

A long, low, mellow hoot sounded through the woods, making Lizenne look up sharply. It was almost, but not quite, like the draconic call to the hunt. “Modhri,” Lizenne said, and leaped into a run, forcing the Paladins to follow.

Not that they were going to object; Keith and Allura were in that direction as well.

 

Keith stumbled away from the dead Gantar, arm aching from his efforts and trying to find a medium between gasping for breath and gagging on the reek of the creature. Ordinarily, he enjoyed having a more acute sense of smell than his team, but right now, he would happily have traded it in for a truckload of air fresheners. This Gantar had been old and canny, and only the fact that Keith hadn't been alone had saved him this time.

A hand came to rest on his shoulder, and he felt a very welcome flush of energy into his trembling muscles, although he knew that Allura didn't have all that much to spare. “Thanks,” he panted.

Allura nodded, patted his shoulder comfortingly, and scanned the surrounding trees for any signs of occupancy. She couldn't see anything, of course; not only was it getting dark fast, but Modhri was far better at covering his tracks than she had realized. They'd found his trail in the form of four dead Gantarash, each one with a small, neat hole burned through the cranium, testament to his expert marksmanship. They were getting closer to him, she knew that much. The fourth dead Gantar's head had still been steaming from the bolt that had perforated it. They had encountered their own recent kill when it had surprised them while they were examining the carcass.

“I may have to ask him for sharpshooting lessons,” Allura mused, “it seems to be an extremely valuable skill.”

Keith smiled and wiped off his blade. “I was just thinking the same thing. We'd better get moving, though. Those little handguns can only fire off eight shots on a full charge, and he's gone through half of them.”

Allura's brows pinched with worry. “I know. Can you find any trace of where he went from here?”

“Some,” Keith said, pointing down the track. “I saw a footprint in a muddy patch just before this creep jumped us. Come on.”

Modhri had indeed gone down that way, but had left the path at the point where it had bottomed out into a hollow between two enormous trees. A tuft of purple fur left on a broken-off twig gave them his direction, and they followed a trail of broken stems and disturbed earth to another small clearing. Their adoptive uncle had been surprised there, they soon found, for another stinking carcass lay slumped over the tree roots, skull blown apart from a blast at short range. He hadn't come away from that encounter unscathed, however.

“Blood!” Allura gasped, pointing at the Gantar's weapon, a man's length of steel that looked more like a saw than anything else. Dark liquid stained some of its teeth.

Keith dropped to one knee for a closer look, and smelled even through the Gantar's putrid stench the brighter note of a circulatory fluid that wasn't all that different from his own. “Yeah. He's hurt, and bleeding pretty badly. I can follow that. We can't be more than a few minutes behind him.”

Modhri had done his best to confuse the trail, though, zig-zagging through the forest and tossing bloodstained bits of underbrush down ravines and and up slopes before splashing down into a shallow brook. Keith might have lost the trail altogether if they hadn't heard the tell-tale sound of another shot a little way upstream.

“Six,” Allura whispered, and they both hurried toward the sound.

They found him tucked into a hollow between the roots of an enormous tree, trying to bind a pad made from half of his undershirt over a nasty gash on his ribs with strips of cloth torn from the other half, and they rushed to help. He looked up in surprise at their approach, but smiled as they took the bits of cloth out of his hands. “There you are,” he said quietly, letting them take over the awkward job of bandaging him up. “That's a weight off of my mind. Do you know where the others are?”

Allura finished tying the pad down and concentrated. “They're close, and getting closer. I think... I think that they've found the ladies as well. I don't think that anyone else is hurt, although Shiro is tiring out very quickly. Wearing the armor is a strain for him even when fully powered. He'll need rest, and a lot of it.”

Modhri shifted, grunted in discomfort, and zipped up the worksuit over the pad; the Paladins couldn't help but notice that the whole left side of his suit beneath the arm had been shredded, and was darkly stained right down to the knee. “Won't we all,” he murmured sourly. “Ouch. That filthy _bh'ranthash vax knotra_ nearly had me.”

“Are you going to be all right?” Keith asked, peering around the tree trunk at the still-twitching corpse of Modhri's latest target.

Modhri pulled himself to his feet, shrugging his shoulders to settle the rough-and ready dressing inside his suit. “I was lucky. It didn't hit my arm or my leg, and the wound is ugly, but the weapon didn't hit bone. It hurts, but I've had much worse. So long as we can get back to the Castle before I take a bad infection, I should be able to manage. The sooner that we all get back together, the better a chance we'll have. How close are the others?”

Keith concentrated this time, finding his teammates to be closer than he'd thought. “Not far. Less than a mile.”

Modhri smiled. “Good. Let me tell them where we are.”

Allura blinked at him in confusion. “You have a working communicator?”

“Of a sort,” he said, pointing at a nearby slope. “Up there.”

They made their way up the steep incline carefully, helping Modhri over the trickier parts until they reached the crest of the ridge. A century or two of unrestrained spring floods had left the land deeply cut with ravines and gullies where the tree roots hadn't been able to hold onto the soil, and Modhri tested the acoustics by knocking a stone against a larger rock. It echoed surprisingly well in the still evening air.

“Good,” he muttered, took several deep breaths, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

The sound that issued forth lifted their hearts and gave them courage, for they had not only heard that cry before, but had made it themselves in the past. Modhri couldn't do it properly, of course, not having the huge lungs or the special echo chambers in his sinuses, but it was a very creditable approximation of the draconic hunting call. It was instantly recognizable, and would draw the others to them like iron filings to a magnet.

Modhri winced, clutched at his ribs, but smiled as he sank down on a handy tree root. “And the Pack is as one.”

 

Both Hunk's and Zaianne's heads jerked up at that summons; they had paused to let Shiro catch his breath again, a necessity that was becoming more frequent than any of them liked. As it was, Hunk was having to carry Shiro's stolen sword for him, and was starting to get very worried for his friend. That long call, however, lifted his heart in ways that he could not define. “That was Modhri, wasn't it?”

Zaianne nodded. “We're close, and he sounds confident. Where are the others?”

Shiro took a deep breath and pushed himself up off of the log he'd been sitting on. “They're nearby. Lance and Pidge are over there--” he pointed off to the right, “--and Keith and Allura are straight ahead. They may already have found him.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agreed, offering his shoulder again. “Even if they don't have Lizenne with them, she'll home in on him like a shot, now.”

Zaianne's golden eyes swept the surrounding area for trouble. “As will the Gantarash, if they hear that and can understand what it means. Let's go and find them as quickly as we may.”

Finding their fellows, thankfully, was easier than any of them had thought—all they had to do was follow the scolding. Getting Shiro up the steep ridge in the dark gave them plenty of time to listen to the low-voiced, angry words, and all three were grinning in amusement by the time they reached the peak. Lizenne was playing her self-appointed role of the Matriarch to the hilt, casting furious aspersions on the Gantarash, who had intruded so rudely into matters that they had less than no business with and had harmed her man and discomfited them all. She also had some criticism for Modhri, who had remembered to bring extra charges for his blaster but hadn't brought along a first-aid kit. To be fair, she cussed herself out as well for neglecting not only the kit, but her bone spear. Allura's ancestors were getting a verbal drubbing as well for not addressing the very pertinent problem of the Gantar's ability to shut down their machinery with all speed while they had the chance, and the Lions as well for not figuring out a method to override the locks on their hangars manually. A few shots were also fired at Coran's grandfather for creating a mighty battleship that was nonetheless capable of having snit-fits on other people's time. That last raised a very welcome chorus of stifled laughter.

“Definitely Matriarch material,” Zaianne said cheerfully, approaching the group with care. “You sound very much like my great-aunt when she was annoyed about something.”

“Hi,” Shiro said breathlessly, easing himself down to sit beside Lance. “Is everyone all right?”

“Could be worse,” Lance said, indicating Modhri, who was sitting patiently while his wife fussed over the long gash in his side. “Modhri's the only one who lost blood, but the rest of us are pretty much pooped out. It's been a long day.”

“Quite,” Lizenne humphed, “and I don't dare drop his ward for a proper healing right now. Zaianne, please reassure me that you are the smartest of us all, and have a first-aid kit with you?”

“Right here,” Zaianne said, pulling a compact little packet from her belt and handing it over. “Your man's great-uncle used to swat his trainees whenever we forgot them. Zandrus had quite an arm on him, and after one or two of those blows, we learned very quickly!”

Lizenne unrolled the packet and removed a few items. “I remember him, just a little, from when I was very young. I remember him as a giant, and I and my brothers were in awe of him. I missed him very much when he vanished.”

Modhri chuckled, then grunted as she sprayed his wound with something that smelled sharply of disinfectant. “He used to sneak us candies when our mothers weren't watching. Lizenne had a terrible weakness for sweets, and he would bribe her into acting as a lookout for him whenever he was up to something that the Matriarch didn't approve of. Didn't you bite her on the ankle, that one time when she'd laid a trap for him?”

“I did indeed,” Lizenne replied proudly, winding a proper dressing and sealing it in place with broad strips of adhesive tape. “I learned the taste of my Matriarch's blood that day, and Zandrus got away clean. It was a good experience for both of us—for me, for it taught me that she could be defied, and for him, who learned that she could be escaped.”

“Valuable lessons,” Allura said, and knocked a knuckle on her armored knee. “I'd like some better knowledge of escapology as well. We need to get out of here and back to the Castle. I do not doubt that the Gantarash are trying to pry it open right now.”

“Yeah,” Pidge said. “Didn't you say that you had some ideas, Lizenne?”

“Maybe,” Lizenne said, casting a questioning look at Allura. “Altean technology was often Quintessence-powered, wasn't it, or something much like it?”

Allura nodded slowly. “Somewhat. We had our own aetheric practices—Alchemy, we called it. All Alteans have a little talent, which is what allows us to change our shapes, and to trade energies to the Balmeras in return for crystals. Alchemical research was a major branch of our sciences, and culminated in the creation of the Lions. I don't know much about the mechanics of it myself, having only enough to work a teludav system—or so we'd thought at the time.”

“Can you draw energy from the Lions?” Modhri asked curiously.

“No,” Shiro said glumly. “Whatever's blocking our armor is blocking them, too. We can feel them, but we can't reach them.”

Lizenne nibbled thoughtfully at a thumbnail and nodded at Allura. “You are a Perfect Mirror, able to absorb, purify, enhance, and distribute massive amounts of aetheric power; you've proven that upon several occasions. Technically, you should be able to draw Quintessence from any living source at will to recharge your energy and that of your team. Perhaps even the armor and bayards as well. You will have to draw energy from the world around you.”

“I will not!” Allura protested indignantly. “That's entirely too much like what Haggar does, and I will not follow her lead on anything!”

Hunk lifted an eyebrow at her. “Allura, I just had to practically carry Shiro here over at least three miles of bad terrain, with big spider guys wanting to eat me all the way. And this big honking knife, which is really heavy. I could really use a recharge.”

Zaianne nodded. “As much as we would like to keep you all as pure as the driven snow, any aetheric talent may be used to harm as well as help. Lance, you could easily stop a heart, and Keith could just as easily burn someone to death from the inside out. Shiro could doom whole worlds simply by not telling anyone what he has Seen. Pidge could turn a ship against its masters in a trice, as could Hunk. Sooner or later, you will all have to make a choice. I did.”

“As did I,” Lizenne said darkly. “Fortunately, I had the dragons to show me the right way of things, and I will tell you, Allura, what they told me on the matter of absorbing power from others: ask permission first, and respect their choice, even if it leaves you disappointed. Never take more than is absolutely necessary, and if at all possible, return the gift later on. Very much like your people's arrangement with the Balmeras, in fact.”

Allura wavered uncertainly, but had to concede the point. “What do you suggest?

“Concentrate on your bond, as you would do in a circle-session,” the witch replied. “Feel around for the largest source of life energies in the area. Lay out your need before it and ask for help. Accept whatever result may come. You might have more luck working as a group.”

“All right, it's worth a shot,” Keith said firmly. “Guys?”

“Way ahead of you,” Hunk said, wrapping his arms around him and Allura. “Group hug!”

Lance copied his example, getting a grip on Shiro and Pidge. “Kiss the monkey!” he said, and planted a smacking kiss on the top of Pidge's head, just because she had her helmet off, and just because he could.

Allura vented a snort of exasperated amusement at Pidge's squeak of protest and murmured, “I can't take you anywhere,” but the tension had broken. Taking a deep breath to relax, she and the others closed their eyes and concentrated on the strange subtle forces that held them together.

They took a moment to simply sit there in each other's company, taking comfort from basking in each other's auras, and then looked up at the aetheric side of their surroundings. To their amazement, they found themselves sitting in a sea of light. The forest was all one vast organism, held together by a network of roots that was nearly fractal in its complexity, a pale, golden-green behemoth that was steadily growing, and would one day break down the stone walls that hemmed it in. They could see the tiny bright stars of the small creatures that lived here, the rusty glows of the hunting Gantarash (thankfully none nearby), and feel the deep, slow awareness of the forest itself. Memory fell like shade from that great sedentary mind, and they couldn't help but absorb a part of its thought. It, too, was an alien here, and very young by its standards—only about three hundred local years old. It had naturalized, and had come into an accommodation with its host-world, and both of them dreamed of the day when that forest would cover the the globe from pole to pole. It was a partnership; the world was also very young and had not developed life much beyond weeds and bugs when the forest had been planted here. The comparatively much more advanced newcomer had quietly absorbed the native life forms and had developed the beginnings of a proper symbiosis with them, nourishing its host even as it took nourishment in turn. The integration had progressed at such a pace that the two had very nearly become one, but all was not well; they had become aware of a disturbance of late, and that something had gone wrong. Parts of the combined super-organism were missing, and there had been frequent flushes of... pests.

_What's wrong?_ Keith asked, baffled by this vast alien awareness.

_The world and its forest have become aware that the Gantarash have eaten their gardeners and large animals,_ Lizenne said from off to one side, visible as a glimmer of gold in the air.  _They may be a little upset about that. Give them a nudge, Paladins; these sorts of elemental tend to be a bit slow, and we haven't got all that much time._

_Let me try,_ Pidge said, remembering the forest on Olkaria, and how easily she had meshed with that burgeoning organism.  _The planet's using the forest as a sort of brain, and I've talked with that sort of thing before._

This paired awareness was very different from those trees, which had been far older, and had been working with the Olkari for ages. This was a wild wood, and had not known the people who had planted it here as anything different from the creatures that pollinated its flowers and distributed its seeds. To be confronted so suddenly by another living mind was surprising, to say the least. It recoiled from her at first, from the very alienness of a mammalian mind, and then reached for her out of curiosity, and then in rapt fascination. Pidge met it halfway in a sort of mental handclasp, and felt herself bloom like a flower at its touch. So did the others, soul-bound to her as they were, and through them, the Lions themselves took note.

In a way, it was much like having to stand for the Hoshinthra Mystics; the forest-mind perceived them just as deeply, although there was nothing predatory about it. The forest-mind had no concept of revenge, or even of anger; conflict was only dimly understood, but it was deeply knowledgeable about cooperation and integration. It could not quite understand malice, but it was aware of sudden, unexpected disasters, plagues of parasites, and of loss. It found as many startling parallels in the minds of the Paladins to itself as it did differences—the potential for growth, the slow accumulation of experience, the ability to learn, and the ability to spread that learning. Above all, it beheld the ability to adapt and to change quickly in response to urgent situations, and it absorbed that knowledge into itself as eagerly as a seedling soaked up sunlight. It also perceived their need, and was willing to meet that need in return for the gift of that knowledge alone.

The Paladins came out of their trance with a gasp and a strong taste of mint in their mouths, and had to sit their blinking in reaction for a moment as their minds readjusted. Allura licked her lips, and shook her head to clear it. “That was... that was... strange,” she said mistily. “My mouth tastes odd.”

Hunk smacked his lips with the air of a connoisseur. “Peppermint. First spring growth, just after a rain. Nice. Huh. Our armor's still offline.”

“But we're not,” Shiro said, straightening up and stretching, feeling enormously refreshed. “I feel better. A lot better.”

“Me, too!” Lance said, hopping to his feet, brimming with energy. “I mean, I feel nap-shower-and-lunch better. This is great! What did it do?”

“It gave us a boost,” Pidge said, breathing deep of the clear night air. “It can't understand armor, but it knows about us now. Um. I think that we gave it something.”

Keith rubbed the bark of a nearby tree gently with one hand, almost affectionately. “Yeah. Something important, but I'm not sure what. Allura, could you see what was going on?”

“Not really,” Allura looked up at the shadowy forest canopy, and then down at their Galra friends, who were watching them with considerable interest. “All I did was take it in the energy it gave us and spread it around, like a river flowing into a delta. Lizenne?”

Lizenne nodded, having observed that exchange very closely. “You've woken the forest up, and it did indeed learn something from you. What exactly that was and how it will use that knowledge, I cannot say, but it was grateful enough to give you strength in return.”

Zaianne chuckled. “I saw a little more than that. If the Gantarash come back here for another of their little hunts, the forest might have a few surprises for them. We should get going; I'm starting to smell them on the breeze now.”

Indeed, there was a tang of fermenting garbage on the air. Shiro grimaced at the stink and stood up, marveling at his renewed strength. “My guess is that they've got the controls for the aetheric damper and the force shield installed somewhere in that ruined palace. I say that we head over there and turn them off.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Modhri agreed. “If the Ladies and I can make it through to their ships, I know a few ways to ground them permanently. We'll want to check them for captives, anyway, and see about rescuing any they might have. I will not leave anyone here to feed those monsters.”

“Hear, hear,” Lance said firmly, and then turned to gaze up at a patch of stars visible in a gap between branches. “I wonder how Coran's holding up?”

Lizenne stood and took up her stolen spear. “Knowing him, he's probably engaged in just as much drama as we are. Let's go.”

 

“Another sandwich?” Coran asked, nudging the platter over.

“Thanks,” Vennex replied, reaching for another; between the demands of the mice and the dragon that had laid its head in his lap, he had only gotten about half of his lunch. “Do they always demand a cut like this?”

“Not always,” Coran admitted, adding a sprinkling of nakka spice to his own sandwich. “You're still technically their prisoner, and they feel obligated to show you who's boss. Right now, that means giving them treats. Just give Soluk a shove if you start losing feeling in your legs.”

Vennex glanced at the dragon, whose six stern blue eyes warned him not to try it. He sighed inwardly, flinched when he heard another _boom_ from overhead as the maneating aliens tried to use the breach in the Castle's hull as an entry point, and then took a bite out of his sandwich. He was still having trouble believing what was happening all around him, but at least the food was good. Even if he had to forfeit bits of it whenever he heard a squeak from the table or a grunt from a little lower down.

“Where did the other dragon go?” he asked, pulling a bit of bread loose and handing it to the biggest mouse.

“Tilla? Probably off checking the seals.” Coran licked vira sauce off of his fingers and took a sip from his glass. “She's a good girl, very concerned for the safety of the crew. I've already activated what self-defense systems were still working, so we'll have that much going for us. We'll still want to armor up, should those filthy creatures get through even those.”

“Mine's busted,” Vennex said gloomily, hearing a grunt from groin level. He pulled off a chunk of sandwich and dropped it into a blue-tongued maw that he would have preferred not to have to look at right now. “The Hoshinthra that caught me banged me hard onto the floor, and that broke its systems.”

Coran lifted an eyebrow. “Powered armor? Last I knew, that was for special units.”

“The fancy suits are. Standard suits have the standard visors, good for bright or low-light conditions. The body armor has temperature control, compensators for working on high-gravity worlds, and built-in comm systems, which are sort of important. You have to be an officer, or Special Forces, or assassin-trained, or even Ghamparva to get anything better. Or make really good friends with the Quartermasters and Maintenance guys. Sometimes they'll slip you an upgrade if you give them enough incentive.”

Coran chuckled. “Fine old military tradition, that. Why, back in the day, the Altean Infantry practically ran on such little arrangements, rather to the annoyance of High Command. The better officers took advantage of them, and the worse ones... well, they either learned to do so, or they didn't stay an officer for long.”

“Really?” Vennex said dubiously.

“Quite,” Coran said, twirling his mustache nostalgically. “Terrible bad luck to mess with those clandestine agreements, goodness yes. A man could come to a sticky end in short order if he came down too hard on the men that made things work... or not work, as the case might be. Why, a flask of numvill in the right place could open up whole worlds of opportunity, if you knew who, when, and where it would be most welcome.”

Vennex shook his head and handed another tidbit to Chuchule. “We've got to be more careful about that sort of thing. The penalties for bucking regulations were pretty bad before you guys popped up out of nowhere, and they're really bad now. The pressure on the officers to make a good showing is intense, and they take it out on the rest of us. I was seriously thinking about quitting and going home, anyway. My cousin needs someone to help with the family business, and it would probably pay better than soldiering.”

Coran refilled his glass. “Allow me to encourage you to do just that, and all of your friends as well. According to the Mystics, the Hoshinthra fleets are about to come out in force soon, and that's going to have an impact on the Imperial Navy.”

Vennex's sandwich dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers, vanishing with a faint gulping noise before it got anywhere near the floor. “There are more? The _Terror's_ not the only one?”

“Saw a big fleet with my own eyes—big, glossy black ships, two and three times the size of the old girl herself, a lot of smaller ones that looked far too much like a meteor swarm for comfort, a sort of Warrior that was definitely a few cuts above Shussshorim's little lads, and those were just the ones that we were allowed to see.” Coran waggled a cautionary finger at him. “I'd muster out in quick-time, if I were you. What do your folks do for a living, anyway?”

“Logistics. Shipping,” Vennex said numbly, his mind's eye full of black fleets bringing doom and destruction to the Empire. “We're part of a big network, and it all has to work together perfectly, or whole thing gets screwed up and the Governor gets mad at us. My family's been in the business of telling the network where all of that stuff has to go for generations now.”

“Hmmm,” Coran hummed, seeing possibilities there. “Information?”

“Some. Mostly goods and supplies,” Vennex said distractedly, shuddering. “Mostly civilian. Some military. All vital, or so Mom used to tell me. There aren't enough of--”

Another _boom_ made the Castle shudder around them. A moment later, Tilla poked her head in through the door and rumbled a long string of crackles and hisses that made the mice sit up and pay attention.

“Starting to break through, are they?” Coran asked.

Tilla nodded, baring her long teeth in distaste. Noticing the platter on the table, she then finished up the remaining sandwiches.

“Right. Lunchtime's over. Soluk, let the poor fellow up and help Tilla mind things while we get suited up,” Coran said, giving the reclining dragon a tap on the snout. “I'm pretty sure that we still have one of Zarkon's old suits of armor lying around from his trainee days, and it might just fit. Did Hunk ever get around to building the suiting drones for your team, Plachu?”

One of the mice squeaked a negative.

“Well, come along, and we'll make do. At least he finished those little blasters in time.” Coran reached over and grasped the Galra's shoulder and gave him a little shake. “Come on, what's wrong now?”

“Zarkon's trainee armor,” Vennex said woodenly, feeling as though reality had once again slipped free of his grasp. “His own armor. For me?”

Coran humphed and pulled him to his feet. “Well, yes, it's the one suit aboard that's likely to fit you. While we had our fair share of Galra hopefuls in the Academy back in the day, Zarkon's the only one who ever got a Lion. Come along, we'll need to help the mice get suited up as well.”

Vennex was forced to kiss reality as he knew it good-bye at that point. Defeated, he mumbled something compliant and followed the Altean to the Castle's armory.

It was strange, Vennex thought to himself as they headed up and down long flights of emergency stairs and threaded their way through a maze of corridors. The one ship that the Emperor desired the most—that Zarkon had shaped his entire ten-thousand-year reign around reclaiming—had sort of picked him up by accident. From the Hoshinthra. It was common knowledge and the core premise of more horror vids than he cared to count that once you were made captive within the _Night Terror's_ hull, there was no escape. And yet...

And yet here he was, whole and uneaten and walking through the last working Altean ship with one of the last working Alteans, with a pair of dragons at his back and a mouse on his shoulder. It was the littlest mouse, too, and therefore the most dangerous. That was the way it worked in nightmares, at least, and he was still half-convinced that he was dreaming. This was merely reinforced by what he saw in the Castle's main armory, which was another one of those big, dim, haunted-seeming rooms that obviously hadn't seen use or occupancy in ages. Not that it was empty, oh no. This ship had once been a seat of government, and all governors needed guardians, and all guardians needed to be properly equipped. The walls were lined with huge cases full of battlesuits that ranged from simple light armor to big, white-plated things that looked as though they could tip over a skyscraper. Rack after rack of firearms stood at the ready, shelves crammed with sleek and deadly weaponry. A special series of armor cases stood toward the back of the room, and Vennex had to stop and stare for a long moment. Paladin armor, at least six complete sets and numerous singletons, none of which would have fit either himself or the Altean. One of them had had tentacles.

“That armor...” he whispered, pointing, unable to articulate further.

Coran glanced up from sorting through the inventory list on one of the other cases. “Hm? Oh, yes. The previous teams. Zarkon wasn't the first Black Paladin, you know. As you can see, there were a number of others before he and Alfor had convinced Gyrgan, Blaytz, and Trigel to sign up with them. Before any of them were old enough, to tell the truth.”

Vennex swallowed hard. “There were a lot of them.”

“Yes,” Coran sighed sadly. “It's not an easy job, nor is it a safe one, piloting the Lions. Voltron's whole purpose is to defend those that can't defend themselves, and the previous teams had a lot of trouble convincing the various planetary governments of the time of that. Far too many of them saw Voltron as little more than a sort of Rent-A-Doomsday-Weapon, and they were continually demanding that it be sent out to do things that ran directly counter to its purpose. The Paladins were usually able to twist their orders around to get the job done without violating too many ethical codes, but it often cost them dearly. That suit of red armor over there, the one with the six arms and long tail? Only lasted for three major missions before a Golnado raider shot him down in violation of treaty. Those six Black Paladins over there were assassinated, one after the other, during the Himchalpi Discords. That blue Paladin there, the suit with the big gash in the breastplate? Her own clan forced her into ritual suicide. That whole team, the one on the far left, was poisoned, and their armor, bayards, and the Lions were stolen outright. Zarkon's first team mission was to steal them back, as a matter of fact, and it wasn't the first time that _that_ sort of thing had happened, either. Alfor made a point of keeping the armor of his fallen colleagues here, as a remembrance.”

Vennex shook his head disbelievingly. “My history teachers never mentioned this sort of thing. They only said that Voltron belonged to Zarkon, and that it was stolen from him.”

The mouse made a very small rude noise in his ear, and Coran barked a bitter laugh. “Not hardly. Voltron was never intended to belong to any one government. It was supposed to have been jointly-owned and operated by... well, sort of by everyone. Everyone pitched in to help support and supply the team and make sure that Voltron and the Castle always had safe and reliable ports to rest and make repairs in, and everyone had a right to call upon them for help. That was why the Academy would accept anyone and everyone, regardless of race or social status, so long as they had the potential. Unfortunately, that made it easy for the various governments to pressure the Paladins into doing their bidding. Quite frankly, what we're doing now is much closer to the original mission statement—that Voltron should be completely apolitical and unfettered by any government authority, and fly around the universe putting out fires and keeping evil to a minimum. Zarkon certainly felt that Voltron belonged to him—the man had never really learned to share—and if Alfor and the others hadn't taken it from him when they did, your Core Worlds might have lost another planet or two. Losing Golraz had driven him totally berserk, and he was all set to return the favor. Platt, where did you stash your armor?”

Another _boom_ reverberated through the Castle, making Vennex flinch nervously, although neither the mice nor the Altean seemed to take any notice. The yellow mouse clambered up a weapons rack with surpising agility for something so round and leaped to a pedestal, indicating a small case atop it.

“Very good,” Coran said, moving to a different case and activating its inventory board. “Just pop them out of there and we'll get you all fitted as soon as I find where Blaytz hid Zarkon's old suit. Zarkon wanted to get rid of it, you see,” he said in a humorous aside to Vennex, “and not just because he'd graduated to the real thing. One of the other trainees had poured a bottle of hwenk extract down inside it, and he couldn't get the smell out. Hwenk fumes made Zarkon a bit drunk, and that was always good for a laugh. The stuff's a tad pungent and more than a little persistent, but it's probably worn off by now. Alfor, being a sentimental chap, had Blaytz hide it here anyway, just in case it was needed.”

Vennex had to lean against a weapon rack while his brain struggled to keep up. Like most Galra, he had great difficulty with the concept that the Emperor had been... well, something close to ordinary once. The man had been an unchanging, undying monolith for ten millennia, and the notion that he had once been a person rather than an institution gave him some trouble. The idea that Zarkon had ever been young, much less prone to teasing from his colleagues, or forced to abide by anyone else's will seemed impossible.

“How do you know all of this?” Vennex asked plaintively.

Coran made a triumphant sound under his breath and opened the case, pulling out a suit of plain, white-and-purple patterned armor. “Found it, and it doesn't even smell like hwenk anymore, although Blaytz wrote something rude on the backplate. I should probably wipe it off, but the historical societies of six different worlds would probably want to burn me at the stake for doing that. You said something?”

“How do you know all of... of what you've told me about him?” Vennex asked again. “There is nothing in the Histories about any of what you've said! Alteans are mentioned, a little, as a scientifically advanced but weak race, and that's not what I'm seeing here.”

Coran sighed, and silently cursed all tyrants for their cavalier attitude toward the truth. “I lived it. I was Alfor's chief retainer, a part-time instructor at the Academy, and the Castle's navigator for the whole time he was flying the red Lion. I wound up accompanying the team through most of their adventures, and had the privilege of hanging around with them when they weren't out fighting evil. Lad, it's not uncommon for ultimate rulers to manipulate historical records in their favor, or to erase whole archives of recorded data entirely, if they don't like what's in it. Yes, my people had made great strides in the sciences—it was one of us who designed Voltron, as a matter of fact. That Galra society would call us weak doesn't surprise me a bit. We were largely pacifistic, yes, and had a cultural mandate to bring peace and prosperity to everyone around us. Mostly we did that through diplomatic work, mediating truces, establishing healthy trade ties, things like that. Galra are predators, and peace and cooperation don't really translate very well into that mindset. We weren't weak. We worked very hard for a very long time in order to keep ourselves and our friends and allies safe, and that made us strong in different ways, is all.”

Vennex waved a hand at a battlesuit that was half again as tall as he was. “Then what was this thing for?”

Coran sobered. “It was for when diplomacy didn't work. Just because we didn't fight often didn't mean that we weren't good at it. Here, try this on. Zarkon was a bit taller than you are, and a bit broader across the shoulders, but the auto-fit function should be able to adjust it to your size. Standard Golrazi issue at the time, since he preferred his own people's product over ours. Said that our stuff always pinched in odd spots, particularly in the groinal region. Lance says the same about the autotailor, and makes all his own clothing.”

_I can't believe that I'm doing this,_ Vennex thought as he donned the Emperor's own armor, and again when he helped the four mice into what looked to be very small Paladin suits. He thought it again when they took up tiny blasters no longer than his little finger and struck heroic poses with them, and a fourth time when he saw Coran's own very flashy suit, complete with calf-length red cape. He eventually took refuge in standing with the dragons, who had parked themselves by the door and had been watching the whole thing with considerable interest; even these two huge beasts had become prosaic in comparison to all of this. At least he could understand the weapon he'd been given. It was an elegant piece of work, a sniper's rifle with an adjustable output setting and a nice capacious charge, just the sort of thing for precision work. That was necessary for dealing with Gantarash, as he knew from painful personal experience. Bad memories tried to surface, and he forced them down again. This was not the time to have a panic attack. Maybe later, but not now.

_Boom,_ went the breaching charges above, followed this time by a sort of ripping crackle; something on Coran's wrist beeped warningly, and one of the dragons—Soluk, he thought—gave a deep-toned chirp of alarm.

“They've broken through,” Coran said, turning away from striking noble poses with the mice. “Damn. Well, troops, let's get up there. We've boarders to repel.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha ha! This story is cancelled because Spanch has declared her new calling is to write little stories about cute fluffy bunnies doing good in the world and spreading peace and love!  
> *crickets chirping*  
> Yeah, didn't think so. ^_~  
> *Spanch dashes in, wearing a lab coat* Ha ha! That will merely be the diversion! I have just completed my most dreadful mad-science project to date, the Ultimate Mary Sue! Cringe and Submit, peoples of the world! Immediately send me all the comments/kudos, seventy-five pounds of lobster, and all the dark chocolate in Boise, or I shall unleash this horror upon an unsuspecting universe! BWAHAHAHAHAAAA....  
> *CRICKETS STILL QUIZNAKING CHIRPING*  
> Damn Altean crickets!


	29. Lots of Running Around and Screaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever have a stretch of writing that just doesn't have a good place to break it off? That's us today, so you guys get an extra long chapter. Our apologies to anyone who had plans. ^^;

Chapter 29: Lots of Running Around and Screaming

 

The palace loomed against the night sky like a bastion of shadow, pocked here and there with spots of bluish light. The Gantarash had indeed been using it as a base of operations, and for some considerable time. The graceful arched gate that haughty upper servants had once ushered the Jensilgen elite through had been removed in chunks and piled off to one side many years ago, to judge by the weeds that had taken root in the heap, and a much more modern blast door had been installed in its place. Above that, a large number of ornamental carvings had been pared off of the wall, leaving a sheer surface that the force-shield met seamlessly with. The Gantarash preferred canned hunts, it seemed, and didn't approve of the prey having any real chance of getting away. Old bloodstains on the door and surrounding walls, made visible by the yellowish glow of the witchlight that Lizenne had generated, were grim indicators that a number of other victims had made it this far, but no further.

“Are you sure that you'll be all right?” Keith asked nervously, peering out of their hiding place in a jumble of rocks and trees nearby; the agreed-upon plan of attack required the party to split up, and he didn't like it much.

“We'll be fine,” Zaianne replied soothingly, “The Gantar's forces are most likely stretched thin enough between the gardens and the Castle to allow us a decent chance of success. Modhri has studied their ships closely, and we've got a potent witch. Once you've shut down their systems here, the advantage will shift fully to our side, and we will burn out this infestation entirely.”

Modhri nodded, his expression frighteningly businesslike. “Don't hesitate to use yourselves as bait, Allura especially. Gantarash have little self-control where it comes to rare edibles, and they haven't tasted Altean in eons. A Gantar who isn't thinking clearly is a Gantar that is vulnerable. Keep that in mind.”

Shiro nodded. “Let's turn the tables on them, so that the hunters become the hunted. Our bayards and armor might be out of commission, but they can't block what the Lions gave us. Think outside the box, team; the Gantarash have never faced anything like us before, which automatically puts them at a disadvantage. We'll make the best of it, and teach these creeps that other people aren't food.”

Lizenne smiled to see the courage that flowed into her odd family at these inspiring words. “If nothing else, this will make that yulpadi in the envirodeck seem very simple by comparison.”

“It will certainly smell better,” Allura said; even at this distance, the once-graceful palace stank like a landfill. “All right. Does everybody have a transmitter?”

Zaianne had gone back and divested Modhri's kills of the electronic keys that would get them past the garden's safeguards, and everybody held up their own.

“Good,” Shiro said, squinting up at the tower's peak, where a window let blue-tinted light out into the night air. “Hunk, Pidge, can you get a feel for where the nerve center of this place is?”

The two Technomages concentrated for a moment, and then shook their heads. “Not out here,” Hunk said. “It's all fuzzy.”

“They haven't done much to repair the wiring in there. They did string some stuff together, but I can't trace the network or tell the control center and the clothes washer apart,” Pidge added. “Not from this side. We'll have to get into the palace itself. Once I can get my hands on their system, it's mine.”

“Well, let's get to it,” Lance said. “Will I get attacked and eaten if I step out of the bushes?”

“Not at the moment,” Zaianne said, flicking a finger back at the forest. “They had found Modhri's first kill when I was getting you your transponders, and they were a bit upset. I don't think that they were expecting you to be a sharpshooter, sir.”

Modhri chuckled wickedly. “Nobody ever does. This isn't the first time that I've surprised them that way.”

“I'm going to want to hear about that sometime, especially if we're going to be encountering these guys again in the future,” Shiro said, lifting his transponder in one hand and trying to ignore the bit of bristly, vile-smelling red shell still clinging to it. “Okay, here goes nothing.”

Cautiously, he eased out of the undergrowth and approached the huge doors, transponder held high, and breathed a sigh of relief when the two big panels slid apart to allow him entry. A wave of his free hand summoned the others, and they headed through in a rush; to their disappointment, their armor did not reactivate.

“Nor will it until you've shut off that system,” Zaianne told them when Lance complained about it. “They're probably using it to hold the Castle down as well.”

“Yeah,” Pidge said, looking around. The gate had led them into a long hall with large rooms on either side, clearly visible through wide stone arches. Those were function spaces from the look of it, and had been used as staging areas by the Gantars; stacks of spare weapons had been positioned neatly in both, and they ducked into one to see if there was anything that they could use. The original light fixtures had been torn out and replaced by clusters of bluish lamps that were useless for her purposes; they were all battery-powered, and she needed an actual power grid to find that control room. “Hunk, can you feel where their power core is?”

Hunk's brow creased as he concentrated, looking for the warm glow of a powerload. It was fuzzy, like trying to navigate in a fog, but he struck paydirt regardless. “There's two. Three, if you count the original installation, but it's busted. The new ones feel like portable generators. The big one is on this level, out thataway--” he pointed down the hall, “--and there's another, smaller one upstairs somewhere. What do you want to bet that they've put the control center in the top tower room?”

Lance paused in sorting through a weapon rack and rolled his eyes. “It's traditional, Hunk. Nobody ever installs a control center in a porta-potty, you know. It's always got to be up at least six flights of stairs with every level crawling with guards, and there has to be a white persian cat on the chair in the control room. The cat's usually the real mastermind, too. Hey, they've got something that looks like stun guns here. Want one?”

Hunk grinned. “Oh, yeah, gimme.”

Modhri hummed thoughtfully, opening a small crate and pulling out a string of small square packets. “We'll handle the one on this level. It's probably powering the force-dome that protects their ships. Zaianne, are these what I think they are?”

Zaianne examined his find, and smiled like a shark. “They are, indeed. Grab all of those that you can carry, if you would, and pass me the rest, and that roll of wire, there.”

“Explosives?” Shiro asked.

“Oh, yes,” Zaianne replied, examining a packet. “Very good ones, and related to the sort that the Order uses. Something like the plastic explosives that your people make—pull the tab here to open the packet, stick it onto the object that offends you, and two minutes later it will cease to be a problem. Less than that if you plant a fuse in it, or throw a lump of it at something, for that matter. Just be careful not to get any of it on your hands. This stuff was designed to react to organic compounds by bursting into flame before exploding. Would you like some?”

Allura stared at the crate in horror. “Just what did they expect us to do out there, to require such measures?” she paused, thought about it, and then nodded firmly. “Yes, thank you, we'll take a string of them, if you feel that you can spare them.”

Zaianne laughed and passed her a six-pack. “We'll make a proper warrior of you yet.”

“Makes me happy,” Pidge said, pulling what looked for all the world to be a manriki-gusari out of the weapons dump. It wasn't quite the same as her bayard, but it was small enough for her to use, and the sharp blade on one end and the spiked weight on the other were similar enough to do the job. So thinking, she unwound her bola whips from her torso. “Cool. I can get rid of a few of these, then.”

“I'll take them,” Lizenne said, reaching out a hand, and then peered closely at the makeshift weapons. “Pidge, the vines you made these from, did they have flowers? Metallic gold at the center, shading to turquoise on the edges?”

Pidge gave her a puzzled look. “Yeah. They were pretty, but I needed the vines more than I needed a flower arrangement.”

Lizenne gave her a sharp look and examined one of the ring-shaped nuts, muttering a faint expletive. “I will definitely want these, then. Lance, try not to lose too many of the ones that you have, either.”

“Huh?” Lance asked, trying to wrap his hands around a rifle that had been designed for someone with twice as many manipulatory appendages as he had. “Why?”

“Because you've gone and weaponized a pair of priceless treasures, that's why.” Lizenne said, stuffing Pidge's bundle of bolas into her satchel. “Jensilgen Paradise Vine, which is extinct on their homeworld. The flowers produce an incense that is vital for properly honoring the gods of at least nine separate religions, and is very popular as a spiritual cleansing or meditative aid on dozens of other worlds. The nuts are known as Quandu's Earrings, and an extract of the nutmeats has been proven to triple or even quadruple the lifespans of many carbon-based peoples. Unsurprisingly, they are also extinct on their homeworld. If I can propagate both of these, the Coalition will have another, very valuable bargaining chip to bring to the table. Oh, dear, and the location of this world will be another, and one to be used with the greatest of care.”

“Poachers,” Hunk grunted grimly, hefting a stun cannon. “I get it. Plus whatever it was that the forest picked up from us. Okay, Varis showed me how to use one of these things, and I'm ready to rock. How 'bout you guys?”

Shiro had found a more manageable knife, Pidge had her manriki, Allura had found a section of pipe that would serve her purposes; Lance had found the Gantarash equivalent of a handgun, and Keith had disdained the lot in favor of his Marmoran blade. With a string of explosives to round that all out, they felt themselves good to go.

“Very good,” Zaianne said proudly, “Now get going. I intend to deny the rest of these armaments to the enemy, and you'll want to get some distance. I'll teach you all how to booby-trap a weapons cache later.”

Keith grinned and began to back wisely away. “Looking forward to it, Mom. Come on, guys, let's do this.”

 

Vennex stared at the dripping object on the ceiling and touched Coran's shoulder to get his attention. “How is that possible?”

Coran glanced up. “Oops, forgot about that. Okay, people, detour time, it wouldn't take much to bring that down on everybody's heads.”

“Coran, that's a swimming pool,” Vennex said, following bemusedly along as Coran changed course. “A _frozen_ swimming pool. On the ceiling?”

Coran puffed a laugh. “Something of a bad joke, that. My Grandfather built the Castle, you see, and had a bit of an artistic temperament. He absolutely hated it when people started peering over his shoulder and asking for changes in the plans. Alfor's father had a bad habit of doing just that, and even though it's considered gauche to fly into a rage at a Crown Prince, Grandfather was sorely pressed. Alfor's father decided that he wanted a full-sized swimming pool, deep enough for a high-dive, no less, in a space that had already been set up as a training room for zero-G combat. Grandfather gave him both in one room, and then refused to tell His Highness how it worked. Baffled everybody up until very recently.”

“It's still frozen,” Vennex insisted.

“Hull breach in space'll do that,” Coran replied calmly. “We're lucky that the antigravs held, actually, or the explosive decompression would have drawn all that water right down the halls, icing them over in a trice. We don't have any ice-skates that would fit you, I'm afraid, so we'd have to slide you along. Terribly inconvenient.”

One of the mice squeaked something that had the others giggling, and Tilla _gronked_ something that sounded uncomplimentary.

Coran gave her a disapproving glance. “Perhaps, but after Grandfather threatened to _squenchu_ his _opwilvis_ when he suggested adding a wave machine, he decided that asking for an ice-rink option was too risky. Never annoy an architect, they have far too many ways to get even.”

Vennex fell silent again, reflecting privately that Alteans, however technologically and sociologically advanced they might have been, had carried a broad streak of silliness in their mental makeup. That their mice had more sense than they did at times was not something that he was willing to contemplate at the moment, even though it was becoming increasingly obvious to him that the mice had been an essential part of the crew rosters, back in the Altean's heyday. _Further proof that the Histories lied to me,_ he thought sourly. _The Alteans_ weren't _weak or foolish; they'd found a way of making their vermin pay rent, for one, and that's more than we've ever managed._

Offhandedly, he wondered if his cousin had ever succeeded in getting that hive of bockles out of the toolshed's walls without actually having to burn it to the ground. Probably not. Bockles were notorious for freeloading whenever and wherever they could. It was a shame that there were ordinances against importing Nantileeri where he came from, but those perky little saurians had a bad habit of becoming an invasive species, too, and had an even worse habit of mobbing anybody who threatened them. They were too small to do any real damage in a one-on-one fight, but when fifteen or twenty of them banded together, they could take apart just about any enemy.

_Just like the mice,_ he thought uneasily, glancing up at the armored rodents riding upon Soluk's shoulders.  _Ye Gods, if I survive this, I am going home and never leaving the house again._ He'd known that the universe was big and strange. He'd been okay with it being big, that was natural, like rocks being heavy and fur being purple, but it had gotten entirely too strange of late.

They climbed up several more flights of stairs to a level that showed the sort of damage that happened when a big hunk of hullplate had been blown loose, and he was about to ask another question when a whiff of something foul and all too familiar crossed his nose. It crossed the dragons' noses as well, and they both began to growl in a way that Vennex had previously associated with denizens of the netherhells.

Coran made one of those little affronted noises under his breath. “Gantarash. A very distinctive fragrance, isn't it? Popular with absolutely nobody. Well, no, I tell a lie. The gogrimphu-beasts of Mnoquip Seven just loved it, but that was because the musk that the females exuded during the breeding season smelled just like that. Since the creatures hadn't progressed beyond throwing rocks at the xenobiologists and couldn't count higher than three, they didn't quite count as 'people' yet, and after a few highly embarrassing incidents, the Gantarash left that world alone. The gogrimphus were actually quite popular as guard animals on several worlds because of that. I wonder if they've achieved sapience yet?”

Vennex was absurdly pleased to be able to come up with a real answer. “Almost. One of my neighbors has one. It can count to ten, solve some pretty complex puzzles, and it's been trained to be selective about who it throws rocks at, and to choose the most appropriate rocks. It's brighter than some of the people I've had to work for, that's for sure.”

Coran chuckled. “That's often the case, between smart animals and clueless management. Be on your guard, everybody, here they come.”

 

Zok-Zop was not a happy Gantar. It would not be at all far from the truth to say that the young fellow was sulking. Zok-Zop had disgraced himself mightily during the last hunt, going so far as to actually _run away_ from the prey, an action that screamed _cowardice,_ which was disrespectful of his Clan, his Bloodline, his God and the Divine Bloodline, and worst of all, disrespectful of the prey. One should _never_ run away from prey, he'd been told, one should always give one's all, one should accept life or death as one's proper due no matter how fearsome the creature was. All would be a part of the Feast of Life, even the Gantarash, and all deserved that same respect.

_Never mind that the ship we'd jumped had Elikonians on it,_ Zok-Zop thought sullenly. _Five of them, all full-grown and battle-trained!_

It had been a lot easier to find good prey in that Sector when the Elikonians had been held planet-bound by the Galra. Elikonians were very dangerous! Those four huge fists could easily crack a person's chitin, and the tail not only did that, it broke bones as well. He'd seen just one of those creatures smash Grazzik-Nop-Nik to pieces, and he himself had been facing _three! Of course_ he had run away, having a healthy survival instinct, which his elders seemed to have lost. _Yes,_ he could have jumped like his mentor had shown him, he still being small enough to make high hops without cracking a joint on the landing, and _yes,_ he could have struck at their eyes while doing so, those being the only really vulnerable parts that Elikonians had. That would certainly have been very respectful to everyone concerned and he might even have disabled one of them, but even the great Gzrak-Zop-Kazza might have felt a few qualms if he'd had three raging monsters trying to pound him into a thin smear of jelly on the decking all at once.

Zok-Zop blew a few grumpy mucus bubbles from his mandibles as he considered his Ship-Lord. The ever-so-great-and-pious-Gzrak-Zop-Kazza had been young once, too, after all, and might have been just a little more considerate of a young person's limitations. Zok-Zop had only just achieved Second Molt a few broodseasons ago and couldn't be expected to perform like a seasoned Veteran of a Thousand Hunts! Even Zikwak-Gnax-Zokka, the oldest hunter aboard any of the Clan's ships, couldn't have handled three raging Elikonians at once, could she?

He'd tried to explain all that to the Ship-Lord after that abortive hunt—seven hunters dead and not so much as a bockle to show for it—but the Ship-Lord had not been impressed. As a result, he was stuck on guard duty in this fusty ruin with the egglings and the unblooded First-Molt youngsters, patrolling a bunch of dim, dull, narrow halls and looking after a pair of generators and a single installation that had been specifically designed not to need looking after. No prey creature had ever gotten out of the Feasting Ground, and none ever would. Not unless there was something out there that could eat right through a destroyer-grade blast door, or three _zektas_ of solid stone for that matter. He hadn't been allowed to help break open the Altean ship, either, a restriction that was just hurtful, in his opinion. Surely, he hadn't transgressed all that badly, had he? All right, so the Clan hadn't had Elikonian since before Gzrak-Zop-Kazza's broodsire's broodsire's broodsire had achieved adulthood, but they wouldn't have to wait much longer, now that those creatures were spacefaring again, would they? Okay, okay, so the Elikonians ranked very high on the List of the Greatly-Preferred Ones, and not for the same reason that the Galra did, but he still found his punishment a little excessive. He gave a despondent little rasp with his rear palps. He probably wouldn't be allowed to do more than pick the bones at the feast, either, even if those unfamiliar ones with the coordinating armor didn't rate a place on the better Lists. He'd probably have to go down to the meat larder and pull out a Foraminth or a Plaxine for his dinner.

_Yech,_ he thought with a  _glorp_ of disgust. Both were on the List of Distasteful Ones, and he had to be really, really hungry before either of those sounded palatable. It was all he would get, though, until Gzrak-Zop-Kazza determined his penance to be over. Oh, well, at least they were all still live meat. They tasted even worse when they were dead.

He picked peevishly at the chipped stone floor with the claws of one foot, and then shifted his weapons-harness uncomfortably over his shoulders. It was his first, and it didn't really fit him very well. Not that it should at this time; he wasn't yet old enough for Third Molt, after which he would be much larger than he was now. He buzzed peevishly. Molting was such a pain. Your exoskeleton started feeling crushingly tight, and then it was three days in the steam chamber to soften it up enough to split easily, and another three or four days of sprawling in the dry chamber, waiting for the new one to harden up, and then being frantically hungry for the next three or four days as your body built up the substance to be able to move under the weight of the new shell. The Third was the worst, everybody said, and you had to do it just right or something would harden up crooked or bent, and then that section would have to be removed, and that meant a whole _month_ of sitting around and doing make-work while that part grew back!

With a disgusted chitter, he turned around and continued on his boring, useless patrol of this cramped and uncomfortable ruin, noting that the youngsters had scuttled off again, possibly to look for small prey in the basement chambers. Well, if he did his assigned duty while they were off playing, maybe they would get Plaxine for dinner instead of him. He was just passing one of the checkpoints when he heard an odd pattering noise from one of the halls up ahead, and a mutter of soft sounds that didn't sound like any of the native creatures. Perhaps one of the hunters had returned with prey? So thinking, he trotted over to investigate. The hallway that the sounds were coming from was unlit; it had been little Zik's turn to hang up fresh lumens in the halls, and as usual, he hadn't bothered with the side passages. Zok-Zop had a feeling that Zik wouldn't live long enough to achieve a second name-segment; that sort of laziness and inattention to detail annoyed the adults, to say nothing of leaving one's self vulnerable to surprise attacks from prey creatures. Grumbling sourly under his breath, he took a lumen from his belt-pouch and activated it. Looking up from the blue-white glow, he got the shock of his life.

Looming up out of the shadows before him was a monster. _Three_ monsters, each as tall as he was, with only two eyes glowing a horrifying yellow in narrow dark faces. His gut lurched at the sickening sight of their half-finished bodies—only two arms and legs, and far too many fingers per grasper—the shell-less hide covered with purple fur! They bared white fangs at the sight of him, and his ancient instincts screamed in horror at the sight of an old, old enemy— _mammalian predators._ One of them let out a hiss that made his blood run cold, and he realized that it was carrying a familiar item; Gzik-Zak's spear, which his brood-mate had polished and sharpened just this morning. He had a bad feeling that he would never see Gzik-Zak ever again.

The biggest one lunged forward suddenly, a dark flash in one hand becoming a long, fearsome-looking sword, and Zop-Zok's survival instinct got the better of him again. _“Hweeeeeeennch!”_ he shrieked, scrambled out of the way of the monster's rush and fled down the hall, his long legs stretching out in huge bounds that carried him toward the checkpoint as fast as they could go. There was a panic button there that would alert every Clan-member on the planet that something had gone drastically wrong, and he slammed it hard with one grasper practically in passing. His cowardly legs refused to stop for longer than that, and carried him pell-mell toward a bank of unglazed windows. In a leap that made him glad that he was still only a juvenile—a bound like that would have left an adult with four smashed legs—he was out through the nearest windowframe and dashing into the forest.

 

“That was odd,” Lizenne remarked, leaning on the windowframe and watching the young Gantar speed off into the trees. “I've never heard of them actually running away.”

Modhri shrugged, frowning at the control board that the frantic alien had dented in its haste. “It happens sometimes. Every now and again you'll get a juvenile who would rather run than fight, and they tend not to survive to full adulthood. If their prey doesn't kill them, their elders will.”

“I don't care,” Zaianne growled. “It's managed to alert the others, and we won't have much time before they arrive in force. I want to cripple their ships before that happens.”

“No argument there,” Lizenne agreed, turning away from the window. “I do hate being interrupted during a good sabotage.”

 

Trees streaked by for several minutes, and it wasn't until he was well and truly lost among the alien vegetation that Zok-Zop was able to slow down. Wheezing for air, breathing spicules opened to their furthest extent, he staggered to a knee-wobbling halt in a deep glade. It was very dark, and small night creatures twittered and rustled around him. Slowly, his hearts eased their frantic pulsing, and his rational mind once again took control. The first thing he thought was: _safe._ The second thing he thought was: _oh, shit._

Those three monsters had been nothing of the sort. They had been Galra, and he'd hunted Galra before, and had even made several kills. Gzrak-Zop-Kazza was going to kill him and feed him to the egglings for his cowardice. He clicked uncertainly. _Wait a minute,_ he thought, _those were the male and two females used in the Ritual Hunt. What were they doing in the ruin?_

Zok-Zop went cold again. Somehow, the prey had gotten out of the Feasting Ground. They couldn't have done that unless they'd killed someone and had stolen his transponder. They couldn't have killed anyone without alerting the others. Perhaps... perhaps his kin were all dead? Zok-Zop's knees quivered again, aching to run and keep running, but this time he got a grip on himself. Far away, he heard the stridulating screech of a Clanmember in trouble, and he turned and headed toward the source of that sound at a dead run. His fellow Clansman needed help! These creatures weren't prey, they were monsters in truth, evil spirits in the shape of common prey! He would redeem himself by helping to fight and banish them!

His transponder _pinged,_ telling him that he was getting close, and indeed, there was a sound as of vigorous thrashing about in the undergrowth not far away. Zok-Zop staggered over a sharp rise, clambered across an uneven hummock of tangled tree roots, and peered around in confusion. According to his transponder, Gzork-Gzok-Nakk should be around here somewhere, practically underfoot as a matter of fact, but he couldn't see any trace of him, and the air was thick with a sharp, green, pungent smell that made Zok-Zop want to sneeze. He could smell, just barely, his Clanmate's scent over that ferocious herbal stink, and peculiar creaking noises were insinuating their way through the heavy, humid darkness in a way that he did not like at all. Quivering with nerves, he reached for another lumen and activated it. The pale, bluish light did not penetrate the heavy velvet darkness very well, and he couldn't see Gzork-Gzok-Nakk at all. Raising the lumen higher, he saw something that puzzled him. On the ground was a great deal of jumbled earth, great lumps and chunks of leafmold and fist-sized stones that looked as though they had been scattered by something coming up from underneath, and with great force. In the center of that jumble was a cluster of huge, broad, flat stems, each of them easily twice or three times his height, and topped with structures that confused him. The stems were jointed, and the tops were thick, broad, fleshy, and sort of folded, reminding him of the Book of Lists that the Ship-Lord kept in the Flagship's chapel. That huge thick thing, bound in real Olkari-hide with pages made from the beautiful, pale-purple Galra-skin parchment had made a deep impression upon him when he had first been privileged to see it, hardcopy books being quite rare. Unlike that book, those folded stalk-tips were rounded, and lined around the edges with huge, gently-curved thorns that reminded him uncomfortably of fangs.

This was all very confusing; he had studied the records of this planet, and nowhere in the botanical section did they mention a plant such as this. It _was_ a plant, he could see that much, from the knotty roots at its base to the leaflike formation of the lower parts of the stalks. It certainly smelled like a plant, having the customary odor of cellulose that he associated with such inedible growths. Curious, he stepped closer, and then smelled something heavenly. Sliding through the herbal air was a bright red ribbon of scent, the scent of fresh blood from the biggest, juiciest prey-creature he could imagine, and it made him absolutely ravenous for just a tiny taste, all concern for his missing Clanmember vanishing under the force of his hunger. It had been a long time since breakfast, and over a week since breakfast had tasted good. His blind flight through the forest had used up a massive amount of energy, and his body demanded that he replenish it. Almost without his conscious thought, he stepped closer to that strange plant, and closer—oh, God, how good it smelled! Closer, and closer still... where was that delicious meat...

Zok-Zop never got further than that. Having never been to Earth, he had never seen a Venus flytrap.

The forest had seen them, in the memory of a Paladin, and it had made some improvements.

 

The alarm signal that the young Gantar had activated did not go unnoticed by his fellows; all over the Feasting Ground, transponders relayed the message. Frustrated hunters, having found nothing better than the stiffening corpses of their fellows, galloped back toward the ruin as fast as their legs could carry them. Gzrak-Zop-Kazza and his party heard it too, and chittered obscenities under their breath. “Do we return, Clan-Leader?” one of them asked.

Gzrak-Zop-Kazza considered that for a moment, then gestured a negative. “Nine prey creatures against the bulk of the Clan? No. Even nine very clever prey creatures would not prevail. I have faith in our Clan-kin. Far more important is the proper claiming of this ship and the creatures within it. I will want to peruse the technologies in this craft personally. What do the scans reveal, Krik-Zok-Zikka?”

The technician thrummed thoughtfully as his device finished the latest cycle. Now that they were past the first barrier, he was getting a much clearer image of what the ship held within it. “Very few, Clan-Leader. Two signatures, one of each: Galra and Altean. Four very small signatures, possibly opportunistic vermin. Two much larger signatures... ah... mostly unknown?”

“Explain,” Gzrak-Zop-Kazza demanded.

Krik-Zok-Zikka rasped his lower graspers together in confusion. “They are similar to a known race, although one thought long-lost, but they are not an exact match. Clan-Leader, the readings... they are suggesting something that is not possible.”

Gzrak-Zop-Kazza tapped an impatient toe-claw on the floor. “I will be the judge of that. What race does the scanner suggest?”

Krik-Zok-Zikka gurgled in embarrassment. “Zampedri.”

Every Gantar froze in shock for a long moment, unable to believe what they had just heard. “Zampedri?” Gzrak-Zop-Kazza whispered faintly.

“See for yourself,” Krik-Zok-Zikka replied, showing him the readout. “Almost, but not quite. Almost as if that people had taken a few evolutionary steps backward.”

Gzrak-Zop-Kazza studied the data for a few minutes, and then pulled himself up to his full and majestic height, making the Sacred Gestures with all four graspers. “How very generous is the Mother of the Gods,” he intoned reverently. “How highly I shall honor Her gifts. Should that be a true pair, then there shall be no other brood-queen so treasured, nor a broodsire better cared-for. Zampedri! Take them both alive, and do not scratch a single scale of them! I shall make of this ship a shrine, once we have cleaned it out, one dedicated solely to the Mother, and She shall have regular offerings of the Greatly Preferred Ones!”

The whole party rasped a long cheer, and raced forward to crack open the next barrier.

 

“Can you make that thing any brighter, Hunk?” Lance asked nervously.

Hunk held the little blue-white battery lamp up higher, but it didn't help much. It reminded him of the old strings of LED Christmas lights that he'd dug out of his grandmother's attic once, when she'd declared the need for a yard sale to get rid of some of the clutter. The things had dated back to the first decade of the Twenty-First Century and still worked; a collector had bought them for thirty times what they'd been worth originally and had been convinced that he'd gotten the better end of the deal. This lamp was a lot like the string of whites: eye-wateringly bright to look at, but it didn't seem to illuminate much of anything very well.

“Yeah, probably,” he said, “but it would burn through the power cell twice as fast. Maybe, if something comes down the hall at us, I can make it flash and blind it a little. Think that would work, Pidge?”

Pidge considered that, thinking back to Plosser's ugly pet. “Probably. The one that Plosser had didn't like bright light much. Ronok had a lot of trouble keeping it out of the mess hall and kitchens, since bright light hurt his eyes, too.”

Shiro nodded. “Right. We'll keep that tactic in reserve, then. Are we any closer to the generator?”

“Sort of?” Hunk replied dubiously. “This place is built like a major convention hotel, Chief. Unless we can find a map, we're sort of stuck. It's a long way above us, and I haven't seen any stairwells on this floor yet.”

True enough; they'd made it to the third floor of the palace out of sheer luck. The Jensilgens had also liked the concept of big, sweeping staircases on the lower levels to impress the guests with. Anything above that was a different matter, apparently.

“Over there!” Keith said, his sharp eyes picking details out of the shadows that none of the others could see. “Is that an elevator?”

They hurried over for a look. It certainly resembled an elevator, although it was clearly broken. The shaft was as wide as a freight elevator's, although it had obviously once been intended for lifting the guests to the upper levels. Finely-carved wooden paneling, now warped and splintering, covered the walls, what was left of a fine carpet covered the floor, and delicate sconces on the walls still held the remains of lamps and flower bouquets. There had even been padded benches built into the sides, upholstered with sumptuous fabrics; those had been smashed, and the stuffing bulged unpleasantly from the shattered seats. The whole car hung at an angle in the shaft, not only wedged but rusted in place, and it smelled thickly of something very like mildew.

“Can we fix it?” Allura asked dubiously, peering into the ruined conveyance.

Hunk laid a hand on the car's bent wall and frowned in concentration. “No way. Somebody was going for retro here. Really retro. Wow. They were using a fluid counterweight system, if you can believe it. That's where you put a big cistern full of water on the roof somewhere, and when you pulled this lever here--” he indicated a broken-off wall switch, “--water would run into the counterweight tank and raise the elevator car. To get back down, a pumping system would send some of that water back up into the cistern, and these sliders here control how much water gets pumped in or out, so you can get to the floor that you want. Yeah, and here are the brakes and the door controls. It's a classic, but really fiddly way of doing it, it needed a trained operator on the job the whole time, and it broke down if you even thought about skipping a maintenance check. It's dead, Jim.”

Shiro rubbed thoughtfully at his chin. “There's probably an emergency stairwell that goes all the way to the top, then. Even if the king had a maintenance staff on the job at all times, it still would have jammed now and again. Plus, the servants had to get around somehow. Now, I'm just guessing from the examples of Earth's own caste systems, but where we come from, the upper-caste types tend to prefer that the lower castes stay as invisible as possible.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, moving over to another bank of windows. “One of my Mom's cousins worked at a major resort once, in one of the really high-end hotels, like thirty or forty thousand dollars a night? Every guest was treated like royalty—heck, a lot of them _were_ royalty—and there was a really strict class system for the staff, too. She said that the only things that made it bearable were the benefits and getting to know all of the secret passages. She said that there were hidden stairways, peepholes, and doors everywhere in there, and that one of the upper-floor supervisors once got tossed out of an eighteenth-floor window into the pool below when he was caught letting the Paparazzi in for a few candid pics.”

“Paparazzi?” Allura asked curiously as he stuck his head out of the window and peered upwards.

Keith waved an indifferent hand. “People who follow the rich and famous around all the time, trying to get pictures and videos of them without asking first. They used to be a real problem, but after a while a law was passed that made it legal for their targets to shoot back, and not with vid-cams. You only get the daredevil types on the job these days. See anything, Lance?”

“Yeah,” Lance said, and pointed off to the left. “We need to go that way some more. The tower's over there, and that'll be the best bet for getting to all of the floors. Also—oh, _quiznek_. Guys, we've got Gantars coming. Lots of them.”

They rushed to the windows and looked out. They were on the side of the palace that looked out over the gardens, and the view would have been stunning with the moons starting to rise over the horizon if the ground below hadn't been alive with arachnoid shadows, all of them attempting to crowd through the door at once. There had to be over two hundred of them down there.

“Crud,” Hunk said worriedly. “We can't fight all of those, not with our bayards out of commission. How are we--”

There was a bright flash and a muffled _boom_ from below as whatever Zaianne had done to the weapons dump went off, and the whole palace trembled slightly, ancient support members creaking and grinding. Roars and bellows of fury sounded from the Gantars in response.

Shiro smiled grimly. “Well, there are a few less of them now. Let's get going—we won't have much time.”

“Right!” the others chorused, and they headed off at their best speed.

Finding the way to the tower was more difficult than they had thought. Time and the damage done by the long-ago invasion had not been kind to the building; large portions of the roof had fallen in at least a century ago, and the weather and local insects had done an amazing amount of damage to the walls and floors. It wasn't long before they started seeing places where the stone tiles had fallen through the rotting underlay, and where ceiling beams and wall paneling had slumped dispiritedly into the halls, forcing them to take detours that they didn't have time for. Harsh, roaring Gantar voices were starting to echo perilously close to them, and the aliens themselves were often seen racing by through the holes in the floor.

“Not good,” Hunk moaned, backing away from yet another hole in the floor. “This place is a real mess, and we still haven't found the stairs. I'm lost. Are you guys lost?”

“Only a little,” Pidge said breathlessly. “This palace is set up sort of like a spiral, with interconnected hallways leading to the center. It used to be easy to navigate, but notice how conditions get worse the closer we get to the middle? I think that all the rainfall that this place has gotten over the years has sort of been concentrated by the tower, and it has really messed everything close to it up.”

Allura snapped her fingers. “You're right. I should have thought of that. One of the Provinces on Altea had a small palace that was similar to this one, only with two towers instead of one. It was a very ancient structure, dating back to well before we achieved starflight, and the Duke who owned it was forever complaining about how the roof between the towers kept degrading no matter what he did to stop it.”

Shiro nodded. “There are a lot of old structures back home that are the same. We might have to make our way down to the base of it to find an accessible way in. You're sure that the generator's up there, Hunk?”

“Yeah, I can feel it now,” Hunk said, lifting a hand to point at the sagging ceiling. “It's right up at the top.”

“Of course,” Lance sighed, rolling his eyes.

Shiro turned to peer down the hall worriedly, hearing the scratch and rattle of clawed feet in the distance. “That means that the Gantarash have found a way up. They don't like climbing walls much, so there has to be a staircase somewhere that will hold their weight, one that we can climb, too. It would have had to have had lighting, too; can you feel the old leads, Hunk?”

Hunk shook his head. “Like I said earlier, that Jensilgen king liked his holiday house totally retro. After two hundred plus years of bad weather and no maintenance, all the old power leads have corroded away, if they were there at all. I've seen a lot of oil lamps, but not so many electric lines, Chief. Anyone else have any ideas?”

Pidge shrugged and shook her head, stumped by the lack of anything to work with. Keith's talents were useless here as well, and Allura's doubly so.

“Any hints, Shiro?” Keith asked.

“No,” Shiro sighed, “and after what happened last time, I don't want to force it. Lance?”

Lance had been standing silently, his face still as he looked inward. He'd noticed how much damper everything was nearer the tower, and how the smell of this world's fungus-equivalents had nearly occluded the background funk of Gantarash. He'd had to help one of his uncles fix a leaky pipe once, and this wasn't too different from what he and Uncle George had found festering behind the drywall back home. Bigger, but very much the same.

“Shh,” he whispered, listening hard to something that they had all overlooked. “The pipes. A lot of them are broken, but there's still water in them. I can use them to see the shape of the palace.”

Pidge grinned. “You're being a genius again, Lance. That's my job.”

Lance smiled slightly, but kept his mind on his work. He could see _everything_ in here, he realized, just by following the slow drip of the rising damp. The shell of the building was mostly stone, but most of the support members were of porous materials, stiff structural foams or imported wood that had drawn in the damp like sponges. In his mind, the walls and floors were all made of sheets of blue glitter, each droplet shining like a star, and he could see exactly where they needed to go. “It's in the basement,” he told them eventually, “all the way down. There's a stairwell that goes right up to the top in there—it's like a pine tree. One big trunk with branches going off into the rest of the building. We can't get to the tower from this level or the ones above it 'cause the floors around it have all fallen in. There are other stairs that'll take us down. One's close. Over there!”

Shiro smiled. “Lead on, then.”

Lance whirled and took off running, the others hot on his heels. Senses humming, he led them around weak spots in the floor and places where the walls and ceilings had collapsed too much to break through, tracing the maze in his mind. Dimly, he sensed Blue in the far distance; she approved of his cleverness, and her approval gave him courage. The stairwell was still intact, thankfully, but it led them down onto one of the public floors—the next available flight of stairs that wasn't about to collapse was halfway across the building. Undaunted, he took off in that direction, only to stop dead a few minutes later when a crowd of angry Gantarash came around the corner, roared triumphantly, and charged. Lance stumbled, concentration shattered, but Hunk surged to the fore, his stun cannon at the ready. There was a bright flash that blinded them for a moment and a loud _“vworp!”_ that rattled bits of facing off of the walls and ceiling, but when their eyes cleared, they saw that the gun had had little effect. He'd slowed the Gantarash down, but they weren't out of action. Frothing in fury and uttering a horrific globbering bellow, the lead Gantar charged. Hunk made an adjustment, fired again, and got no better results.

“Run!” he shouted.

Nobody argued. These were fully-grown Gantarash, each one standing nearly nine feet tall, armed to the mandibulae and killing-mad. The team might have taken them on if they'd been out in the open and with working armor and weapons. Not here, not now, and not in a crumbling building where the monsters had the advantage.

“We should have figured that those cannons wouldn't work on them,” Pidge panted angrily. “Varis never tried to use his on Plosser's Gantar, and he had lots of opportunities. Lance, how close are the stairs?”

Lance groped desperately for his other sight and spotted the stairwell that they'd been heading for. “Not far! Right over there, but the floor's bad all along there. Hang a right!”

They did so, and saw at the next intersection another Gantar galloping up from their left; halfway down the hall, however, its clawed feet hit a section of floor that was no longer strong enough to hold it, and it fell through with a soggy crunch and a rasping screech of alarm. That cry cut off with a very final crash below. The Paladins had no time to process that, for their own pursuit was catching up. They fled, following an increasingly desperate Lance.

They came out eventually into a large room that might have been a ballroom once, gasping for breath. “Stairs... Where?” Keith wheezed urgently.

Lance waved a hand at a crumbling door, and they crowded through it into what had to have been a kitchen. Past that, there was a narrow, plain hallway leading to what was unmistakably a stairwell; unfortunately, it had a Gantar on it. It uttered a chittering laugh and leaped forward swinging huge axes, each of which had to have weighed sixty pounds. Lance had led them here because his other sight had suggested that the floor, while weak, was still up to supporting their weight. It wasn't up to bearing over a quarter-ton of ballistic Gantar, and the spiderlike alien screeched in alarm when the floor supports snapped under its weight. The Gantar flung its arms out, axes crunching into the flooring in a desperate attempt to keep from falling through, but that just splintered the ancient, rot-riddled beams. The stricken floor groaned in architectural agony, and both Gantar and Paladins dropped through in a shower of debris and a chorus of screams.

The floor below was in no better shape. The Gantar hit it squarely, shattering the sagging surface and most of its exoskeleton, and plummeted down into the foundations of the building to land with a sickening crunch on the stony surface of the basement floor. The Paladins landed heavily on top of it, which saved them from serious injury, but not from certain other indignities.

“Is everyone all right?” Shiro asked a little shakily, peering around in the inky darkness for his friends.

“I'm okay,” Keith said, following that with, “oh, gross.”

“I'll live, but I may spend the rest of the week in the bath,” Allura said in a sick voice.

“Nobody told me that these guys were so gooey on the inside,” Lance complained. “Yuck!”

Hunk groaned. “You know, I've never really been scared of spiders. I mean, they're really good pest-control specialists and the orb spiders are great natural engineers, but I'm starting to develop a serious aversion here. Pidge, are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” Pidge said in a thin voice. “Just got the wind knocked out of me. Do you still have that light, Hunk?”

Something in the darkness uttered a high-pitched chitter, answered by a chorus of squeaks and clicks that was echoed all around the room. The Paladins drew together in instinctive apprehension.

“Mice?” Lance suggested, but from his tone, he seriously doubted it.

“Hold on,” Hunk said, “I had it here somewhere... got it.”

A moment later, a burst of blue-white light illuminated their surroundings. This had been a storage room once, with brackets for shelving lining the walls. The shelves themselves were long gone, along with everything that they had held. The brackets now served as support for sheets of silk of the sort woven by Earthly wolf spiders, and the silk was occupied. All around them, the light glinted off of thousands of curious spider eyes. Hundreds of baby Gantarash were staring at them, each one ranging from raccoon-sized to the size of a large dog, their coats of yellow-streaked orange bristles turning the floor, walls, and even the ceiling into an arachnophobe's horror-carpet.

“Food?” one of the larger egglings chirped.

That was too much for Keith, who had grown up learning to avoid poisonous arachnids. His father's house had been comfortable, but it had attracted all sorts of unwelcome arthropods, and a near-miss with a black widow spider when he was six had cemented his dislike for them. Keith uttered a yell of pure revulsion and burst into flame, instinctively trying to kill them all with fire.

The egglings squealed in terror, all of them having an equally strong instinctive aversion to being burned to death, and scrambled up the silk netting and out through the hole in the ceiling. Keith came back to his senses a moment later, wild-eyed and panting for breath, with Lance's arms wrapped around him and the smell of scorched hair in his nostrils. Not just his hair this time, either; the others had received a light roasting as well, and the crushed Gantar beneath them smelled no better for having been par-broiled.

“Sorry,” Keith muttered.

Lance patted his helmet and said with utmost sarcasm, “It's all right, Keith, I didn't need those eyebrows anyway.”

“It worked, though,” Shiro said, pulling himself cautiously to his feet. “The way is clear. Can you still see the tower stairs, Lance?”

“Uh... hang on,” Lance said, letting go of Keith and concentrating. That brief burst of sudden flame had baked some of the moisture out of the room, but the damp was pervasive enough to tell him what they needed to know. “Yeah. It's right over there, but we had better hurry. If those little guys could get out through that hole, then more big ones can come down through it.”

“Home stretch,” Keith muttered grimly, pulling himself out of the half-cooked wreckage. “Let's get this over with.”

The tower stairwell was only a few rooms away, and it had been built more or less as an afterthought. Far more attention had been paid to the pair of big freight elevators that lay smashed in their shafts on either side, but the battery-lamps that had been hung on each landing revealed the stairs to be fairly sound, if rusty; the Jensilgen elite might have ascended upwards upon broad, well-carpeted stairs, but the servants had been required to make do with what looked to be the same sort of steel grating construction used in fire escapes. They were narrow, too, far too much so to allow even one full-grown Gantar to climb safely.

Hunk craned his neck, trying to get a good look at the supports. “Gonna have to be careful going up, guys. The stairs are good, but the walls they're bolted to aren't. My guess is that they got some of the little ones to haul up the generator and controls, or they're better at climbing than we thought.”

“Let us get up there as quick as we can, then,” Allura said, giving the upper landings a dubious look. “I don't like this. If we are trapped up there, there will be no way out.”

“Maybe,” Pidge said, sniffing at the air, the hint of a fresh midnight breeze tantalizing her nostrils. “I saw a window at the top of the tower before we came in. If we can kill their system and break out through that, the jetpacks will get us down safely.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Shiro said and started up the stairs. “Come on.”

Keith was right behind him with Allura and Lance following, leaving Hunk and Pidge to bring up the rear, and not a moment too soon, as it turned out. Angry bellows and roars were now audible, and sharp commands given in booming voices. Someone down there had calmed down enough to think, and that was very bad news. They had only gained four or five levels' worth of height before the Gantarash found them; they knew that the game was up when a huge, blood-red individual forced itself through the doorway and howled hungrily up at them. Seeing that it was too large to follow them, it hauled itself out again, and this time a pair of much smaller, orange-red Gantarash were sent in.

“How long a range do those stun cannons have?” Shiro asked breathlessly.

“Not long,” Pidge called back. “Maybe twenty or thirty feet before they start to lose effectiveness. They're more broadcast weapons than anything else, and were designed for taking down groups. I don't know anything about that handgun Lance has.”

The two young Gantars were already swarming up the stairs after them, and more were crowding in behind them. Lance leaned over the rail and took careful aim, squeezing the trigger when he was sure of a hit. The gun had little effect, unfortunately, making the one in the lead stagger awkwardly for a moment before continuing onward. He kept trying until the charge ran out, and then threw the gun at them with a snarled curse. That, at least took care of one of them. The gun was a weighty object and his aim was good. It hit one of the Gantars square in the eyes, causing it to screech, grab at its injured face, and lurch against the railing, which was no longer strong enough to bear its weight. The rusty rail snapped, sending that Gantar and two others plummeting to the floor below, where they landed with sickening crunches. Pidge unwound her manriki-gusari and prepared herself to use it—Gantarash were strong, but they were brittle, and a fall of over twenty feet broke them up too badly to remain a significant threat. Her first strike with the weighted chain smashed into the leading Gantar's knee, cracking the joint and causing it to lurch dangerously, but it caught the chain in one grasper on her second try and attempted to yank her off of her feet. She let go just as she felt her balance tip, but caught herself against the rail just in time. The Gantar might have had her anyway if a length of sharp steel had not impaled it from above—Shiro had thrown his stolen hunting knife, and the Gantar fell screaming over the rail with the blade embedded up to the hilt in its torso.

These small victories were heartening, but weren't sustainable, even when Hunk pulled the charge from the stun cannon and sent the heavy weapon rolling down the stairs like a barrel, an action that only knocked two more off before one of their pursuers kicked it off of the stairs. Allura passed her length of pipe to Pidge, who was able to bash and batter any Gantar who got too close reasonably effectively, but their luck ended when the enemy got ahead of them. Somehow, one of the creatures must have made it out onto the palace roof and had used the carved facade of the tower itself as a ladder, allowing it to break through a window on the topmost floor. The steel door that had been the Paladins' goal was torn right off of its hinges from the inside and hurled down the shaft by the bristly red monster, which screamed in triumph and started downward, slavering eagerly.

Allura could see only one solution to the problem. It was risky, but it was better than trying to fight these creatures hand-to-hand. So thinking, she pulled a small object from the length of strapping that she'd tied around her waist earlier, and peeled off the wrapping. Taking careful aim, she hurled the object over the rail, and grinned fiercely when it struck a Gantar squarely in the back, sticking in place as she had hoped.

“Take cover!” she shouted, “up against the wall, and facing it!”

Down below, one of the Gantars started shrieking, and the hot stink of burning hair wafted upwards. The Paladins, remembering what Zaianne had said earlier, immediately crammed themselves up against the clammy stone wall, hands shielding their faces. A few seconds later, the world came apart with a glare of harsh light, a bone-shattering _BOOM,_ and a wash of searing heat that took their breath away. The tower rocked violently under the force of that blast, and the Gantar that had blocked their path lost its footing in the confusion and plunged screaming downwards, splaying its limbs out in a desperate attempt to catch itself. One grasper snagged on a railing, but it could not hold the big alien's weight, and there were dreadful metallic tearing noises as a large part of the stairwell lost the fight against gravity, and rusting steel bolts and screws shot like bullets through the air as the supports gave way. The Paladins were forced to scramble for safety as the stairs started to crumple beneath them, and found refuge on the upper landings. Those were stone, built right into the structure of the tower itself, and were—for the moment, anyway—stable.

Hunk, eyes streaming from the fumes, hauled Pidge up onto his landing; she almost hadn't made it, and he held her close until the smoke cleared. There was a certain amount of rattling from below from the remains of the stairs as they settled into an irredeemable heap of scrap, but the insect-monster noises had stopped. Eventually, he felt inspired to comment.

“Allura, you are a crazy woman. No more of those, okay? You'll bring the whole tower down next time.”

A cough from above and a sharp, “It worked, didn't it?” told him that she was just fine, thanks.

Lance peered down at Hunk and Pidge from the edge of his landing cautiously, and then shouted upward. “Looks like you took out all the stairs below us.”

“And that bug tore all the stairs above us loose, too,” Keith said, trying to see what was going on at the bottom. “You okay, Shiro?”

“I'm fine,” Shiro said, and pointed upward, “but that Gantar showed up too soon. I'm one level down from the top floor, and I can't climb up any higher.”

Pidge looked up and let out a fatalistic groan at what she saw. Her teammates were fine, just a little shaken, but they had gone and spaced themselves out, one per landing, almost but not quite in a direct line to the top floor. She knew all too well what that would mean.

Hunk held her tighter. “You okay?” he said anxiously. “You're not hurt, right?”

“I'm fine, Hunk,” she sighed, patting his hands reassuringly. “It's just that I can see the future.”

He gave her a suspicious look. “That's Shiro's job.”

“I know, but I can hear the universe laughing at me,” she grumbled back, scowling at the whims of fate. “A dead rat would be able to see where this is going. All right, Hunk, just this once.”

“Huh?” Hunk asked, wondering briefly if she'd hit her head on something.

Pidge growled under her breath, resolving to hunt down the Imp of Murphy and kick him in the groin. “Hot potato.”

Hunk blinked, looked up at the conveniently-staggered progression of teammates, and a huge smile spread itself over his face as he put two and two together. “Really?”

“Yes, Hunk,” Pidge sighed wearily. “Really.”

“Yay!” Hunk exulted, heaving himself to his feet with Pidge cradled in his arms. “You are the best teammate ever. Hey, guys, guys! Hot potato!”

“What?” Shiro asked, but the others caught on immediately.

“Ready when you are, Hunk,” Lance said, cracking his knuckles.

Pidge glared at him. “Just so you all know, if any of you drop me, my angry ghost will chew your faces off in your sleep.”

Hunk chortled and gave her a quick cuddle. “Aw, come on, Pidge, don't be like that. We've been practicing with the sofa cushions, and you're more aerodynamic than those are. Coming at you, Lance!”

Pidge squeaked in outrage as she was tossed upward, and Lance caught her with insouciant ease. “Hi,” he said, hefting her a few times. “You've bulked up a little more since last time.”

“Lance...” she said warningly.

“Don't worry about it, it looks good on you. Hey, Allura, heads up!” he said, and tossed her before she could punch him.

Allura received her as easily as if she played Varda-Toss every day and twice on Quorsdays. “Hello, Pidge, passing through?”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “Yes, please. Going up.”

“Indeed,” Allura agreed. “Keith!”

Keith was at a difficult angle, and had to steady himself against a wall when she landed in his arms. “Hi,” he said with a smile.

“Hi,” she said ironically. “Not used to picking up girls?”

He shrugged. “Well, you won't let us, Allura's too tall, the mice are too small, and Tilla weighs something like a couple of tons. Mom and Lizenne would deck me if I tried anything with them. Hey, Shiro, want a snarky egghead?”

“Sure,” Shiro said, bracing himself carefully. Pidge was small, but she was solid, and her sheer indignation carried a weight all of its own. He grunted when she landed in his arms. “Hey.”

Pidge sighed. “Just boost me up there, please.”

Shiro judged the distance carefully. He wasn't quite up to throwing her yet, but she would be able to reach the top of the landing if he lifted her straight up. Bracing his back against the wall, he let her climb up his good arm like a monkey, and she was just tall enough to pull herself up onto the jutting stone.

Pidge headed cautiously into the tower room; after all, if one Gantar had been able to clamber up the tower, then more might have decided to copy that idea. Thankfully, the room was empty, and she was able to enter unmolested. Even stripped of its furniture and anything else of worth, its rich wall panels gone to moss and splinters and the intricate mosaic that had covered the stone floor scattered and chipped, it was still a beautiful room. This had been part of the King's own private quarters, a half-circular space that boasted a bank of windows all along the curved outside wall, and the clear night air that blew in through those empty frames was incredibly sweet after the reeking funk of Gantar that had saturated the rest of the building. She could see the entire spread of the palace gardens from here, complete with the faint peach-colored glow of the force-dome that covered it. Beyond those walls, the rising moons gave her enough light to make out the pale spires of the Castle of Lions. Pidge nodded to herself; she wouldn't have to guess whether or not she had turned the control board off properly. That was nice. It was always nice to be able to see the results as they occurred.

So thinking, she cast around with her own sixth sense for the mechanism, hearing the tell-tale pulse of it in a side chamber that only had one window and hardly any decorations at all. _Personal servant's room,_ she thought absently, homing in on the blocky device that had cost them all so much effort and irritation. It was surprisingly simple, she found, it being little more than an on-off switch for a pair of pre-loaded programs. The one for the force-dome was nothing new, having probably been lifted ages ago from some Galra ship or other. The second... that one was old. Not the device itself, that couldn't have been more than five years old to judge by the wear on it, but the programming language was archaic. And familiar. Pidge realized with a shock that the aetheric damping technology was one of Haggar's early projects. Very, very early, possibly dating all the way back to when Zarkon had destroyed Altea. Allura had said that there had been dozens of colonies and hundreds of enclaves on as many planets, plus all sorts of space stations, forts, and habitats. Given how heavily Allura's people had relied on aetheric science, the surest way to cripple them would have been to deny them that technology. All of them broken up and destroyed, billions of innocents dead, the last remaining survivors hounded back to a single colony world that was no better than a cage. All because one woman had built the original of this machine, and thereby committed a horrific act of betrayal against her own kind in the name of personal power.

“And somewhere along the way, a Gantar got his hands on it, and held onto it, and made more of it, just on the off-chance that they could eat any Altean who escaped the Galra, and you let them. _You_ _let them._ Your own people,” she whispered to herself, shutting the system down and killing the nearby generator as well. “Haggar, I really meant it when I declared _kheshveg_ on you. When we're done with you, you're going to be so dead that whole zombie apocalypses are going to point at you and say, 'wow, she's really dead!', and then go back to their graves feeling too inadequate to rampage because there is no way that they'll ever be as dead as you're gonna be. You wait,” Pidge grinned evilly as her armor suddenly became much lighter and her bayard hummed to life in her hand. “You just wait. We're coming.”

With that, she raised her bayard and smashed the control box to pieces.

 

_And far, far away in the heart of the Empire, Zarkon saw his longtime companion twitch and heard her gasp faintly, drawing his attention away from the report that one of his Generals was reciting. “Something the matter?”_

_Haggar shook her head, trying to banish the sudden pang of anxiety that had popped up like a bubble in her subconscious, completely unbidden and for no discernible reason. “It's nothing,” she replied shortly, annoyed at herself._

_But she couldn't shake the feeling that it had been very much something, and as a result she was edgy and irritable for the rest of the day._

 

Completely unaware of the effect of those words, Pidge took it one step further by hauling both the ruined control box and the portable power core to the landing and shoving them over the edge, where they hurtled downward to crush the one Gantar that had survived the blast.

“Nice one, Pidge!” Lance called up to her. “Our armor's come back online. Can you see the Castle? Is it back on, too?”

Pidge glanced over her shoulder at the bank of windows, and was happy to see that the force-dome was gone and the blue running lights of the ancient Altean ship were gleaming brightly. “Yes, it is!” Pidge called back. “We're in business, guys!”

“Great,” Shiro said with a triumphant smile. “Let's get out of here, then.”

“I wonder how Mom is doing?” Keith said musingly.

That question was followed by a distant _boom,_ and then another, and another, and then several more in quick succession, and the tower trembled slightly with each concussion. Outraged howls from the Gantarash who had taken cover in the basement rooms echoed up to them, along with the rattle of many insectoid feet as the aliens scrambled out to protect their starcraft.

Hunk laughed. “Sounds like they're doing okay. Come on, guys, we'd better go and help them.”

Seeing nothing at all wrong with that suggestion, they boosted down from their perches and followed the Gantarash out.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who comments or leaves kudos, thank you. We love you guys. And do the reader who just commented earlier today about finally catching up with the story, I am so sorry. Hopefully this chapter was enough fun for you to forgive us.


	30. Anecdotes and a Boss Fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanna say, I'm sorry if there's more typos than usual. I'm not exactly at my best right now, as Faerie Queen Influenza has come down on me like a sack of bricks. X_X

Chapter 30: Anecdotes and a Boss Fight

 

One of the things that made Gantarash so dangerous, Modhri thought as he made his way through billows of acrid smoke toward the next ship, was their incredible talent for adapting their own technology around that of other people's. Their ships were all amalgamations of the best systems and parts from dozens, if not hundreds of styles taken from as many different races, all of them redesigned and melded together in a fashion that could only be called _Gantar._ It was a little like Hunk's own native talent, in a perverted sort of way, and it was with great satisfaction that he exploited another very Gantarish trait. Gantarash tended toward a swarm mentality: when a group of them had a single goal, they focused on that goal to the exclusion of all else, and took no thought whatsoever for anything else that might be going on around them until they had either achieved that goal or died trying. They became manageable when one split them up into smaller groups, but only up to a point. Gantarash did not give up, nor did they retreat, and they could not be turned against each other. They could be distracted if the new issue was pressing enough, but it had to be a real existential threat... much like the one that he and the ladies were preparing now.

They were also quite arrogant in some ways, he mused as he located that crucial spot among the next ship's thrust-tubes and affixed his homemade bomb to where it would do the most good. Despite millennia of experience with all of the dangerous peoples in the known universe, the Gantarash had never come up with a protocol for dealing with jailbreaks. Once they'd caught you, they figured that they had you, and didn't need to worry about little things like posting sentries. Standing guard seemed to be punishment detail, or a pastime to keep the juveniles busy, and the adults avoided it whenever they could. They simply could not believe that prey could be more clever and resourceful than they were.

_Mind you, they are often correct,_ Modhri thought, trotting toward the next ship and catching a glimpse of his wonderful wife as she flitted through her own assigned section—there were eighteen ships in this old landing yard, and the three of them had split up to sabotage them all as efficiently as possible. Gantarash were always supremely confident in their own skills, and the average galactic citizen wasn't. Especially when faced with a reeking monster that wanted to eat them and their entire families. People in that situation often panicked, particularly those who had come from an herbivorous or omnivorous evolutionary background.

Modhri sneezed, winced at the twinge from his wounded side, waved a billow of smoke away from his face, and continued on. He and the Ladies had had no trouble in finding the dome generator that had been protecting the ships, and Modhri had delighted them both by not only shutting it down, but rigging it to explode if someone were to try to reactivate it. Zaianne had further obscured their trail by taking a double handful of little black pellets from one of her pouches, moving to the upwind side of the landing yard, and then scattering them widely; the pellets had reacted by spewing out huge clouds of some sort of smoke that was mildly irritating to a Galra, but actively dangerous for Gantarash. Those big bugs had a very different respiratory system than most mammals did, and certain kinds of smoke particulates were very dangerous to them. Should any Gantar approach, it would soon have other things to think about than dinner.

He paused a moment, hearing a loud _boom_ in the distance, and looked up to see puffs of smoke and flame bursting out through the tower's windows. He smiled, affixed his last bomb to the final ship, and looked up at the distant, five-spired shape of the Castle. To his delight, the pale-blue running lights began to glow rather prettily against the white hullplate.

“Success,” Lizenne purred in his ear. “Zaianne's done with her allotment of ships, as am I.”

“I've just finished,” Modhri replied. “Shall we?”

Lizenne indicated what was left of the landing yard's control tower, a great thick stump of blastproof construction. The architects had done what they could to make it match the palace's décor, he saw as they hurried to join Zaianne in its protective shadow, having given it a facade of the same pale-yellow marble as the main building boasted. That was in the process of flaking off like a lizard's old skin, and he could see the much more modern duracrete beneath. Zaianne greeted them with a cheery salute from her spot in the stablest part of the ruin, and let them get settled with their hands firmly covering their ears before she pushed the button on her remote. Eighteen thundering explosions shook the earth in quick succession, sending a hot wind whistling around them, full of small debris and fumes. Modhri sniffed carefully, and nodded in satisfaction. The Ladies had taken his lecture to heart, it seemed, having set their bombs so that they would destroy only the tubes while leaving the fuel lines intact. Gantarash did not use Quintessence-powered craft, oddly enough, and powered their ships with some sort of sour-smelling semi-fluid substance that had been baffling Empire scientists for ages. From his own personal experience, Modhri knew that the stuff did not like oxygen-rich conditions, and not only degraded very quickly but burst into noxious green flames while it did so. There might be some people still held captive in those craft, and Modhri wanted to be able to get them out alive.

He waited until the thunder died away before standing up to take a look at their handiwork, the Ladies close behind him. “Well done,” he murmured in an echo of his wife's usual accolade when they saw eighteen ships still standing, but that were now completely unspaceworthy. “That's a whole ship-clan that will never prey upon others again.”

Lizenne cocked an eyebrow at him. “You're sure about that? What if a survivor should call another clan in to help?”

“There will be no help,” Modhri said simply. “I made a study of Gantarash during the time that I was a ship's captain, Lizenne. The Gantars believe very strongly in personal responsibility. If they run into a situation where they cannot win, or even escape from, then the fault is theirs and theirs alone. They will call the other clans, but only to warn them about what had happened. They will not endanger other clans by calling for aid, but will accept their fate as a judgment from their gods. They're a surprisingly spiritual people, but that spirituality revolves around their appetites.”

Zaianne gave him an odd look. “How did you find all of that out?”

“I asked one,” Modhri replied with a shrug. “We managed to capture one alive when I was a ship's captain, and I spent some time talking with it. It did its very best to convert me to their faith, you see, having drawn some interesting paralells between its philosophies and ours, and it told me a very great deal about their culture. Unfortunately, I never got around to writing it all up; that was just before General Claxorn stole most of my fleet for his little campaign, and I had no time for writing cultural trivia after that.”

“And then Voltron happened,” Zaianne sighed. “When we are off of this rock, sir, I will want that much-belated report, and in as much detail as you can muster. The Blade of Marmora has had great difficulties with the Gantarash in the past, and would be very grateful for whatever you can give them.”

“Time permitting,” Lizenne said firmly, waving a hand in the direction of the palace. “We've still got work to do.”

Modhri snorted in amusement and pulled his blaster out of its holster as a swarm of angry Gantarash came galloping out of the palace. “Information or death, eh, Blade? Let's try for the first.”

Zaianne grinned back and pulled out another pouch of smoke pellets. “Quite. Ah! And we will not be alone.”

They heard then the chatter of Hunk's bayard as it spewed golden beams into the crowd, and the sharp blue bolts of Lance's bayard followed, seeking specific targets. Gantarash screamed in dismay and rage and milled around in confusion; they were not used to being attacked, much less from two sides at once. Lizenne laughed, and lifted her voice in the dragon's hunting call, Modhri and Zaianne adding their voices to hers. A chorus of cheers from the Paladins answered them, and the three Galra leaped into a run, the sooner to rejoin their pack.

They were intact, Modhri was pleased to see. A bit grimy and splashed with substances best left unnamed, yes, and there was a definite whiff of scorched hair about them, but they were holding their own in the fight. Even Shiro, for all that Allura had the bayard at the moment, the rose-colored lash of it snapping out to smash Gantarash legs. He flicked a few hand signals at his mate, and she nodded, dashing over to loan Shiro the use of her much-coveted tambok-fang knife. It wasn't quite as good as a bayard, but it did the trick nonetheless, and between their combined prowess and Zaianne's smoke pellets, the Gantarash fell in droves before them. It was almost too easy; after a few minutes of breathing the smoke-heavy air, the Gantarash began to stagger and lose coordination, and the smaller ones often simply collapsed and lay twitching until someone finished them off.

At last, the final enemy screamed and collapsed, Shiro's knife flashing forward to sever its head in one quick, economical motion.

“That's everything?” Hunk asked breathlessly, holstering his bayard and staring around at the mess that they had created.

The moons were very bright, and showed the stinking wreckage very clearly; Lance made a revolted sound in the back of his throat. “I can't believe that we just did all of this.”

Shiro sighed, shoulders sagging wearily. “That's war for you. It probably won't be the last time that we'll have to do this sort of thing. We've gotten spoiled. At least the Sentries don't bleed or scream.”

“Or eat people,” Pidge reminded him, kicking a nearby carcass. “We should get back to the Castle.”

Modhri shook his head. “Not just yet. There may be captives aboard those ships, remember, and I will not leave them to die.”

Keith looked up at the looming shapes of the starcraft around them. “Yeah, you said that earlier. But won't that leave Coran in a bind? He's alone in the Castle, and the Gantars have probably broken in by now.”

Modhri gave him a wicked smile and pointed up at the pale spires of the Castle of Lions. “To their sorrow. I've spent some considerable time greasing that old hulk's gears and tightening its bolts, and I know what it can do if hostiles board it without permission. Coran also has an intimate knowledge of the ship, and he has the dragons, and he has the mice.”

“Oh, Ancients, the mice,” Allura muttered, and then smiled at Hunk. “You did finish making improvements to those little suits of armor, didn't you?”

Hunk nodded. “And the little blast rifles. I'm really proud of those. They're small, but they've got good range, and can blow holes in blast plating. If they aim for the eyes, those Gantars won't have a chance.”

Lance shifted uneasily. “Yeah, speaking of little ones, there are a heck of a lot of those baby Gantars still in that palace somewhere. Are we just going to leave them here? Yeah, it's a great way to discourage poaching, but if we ever need to come back--”

“It won't be a problem,” Zaianne said quietly. “There is nothing for them to eat here, save each other, and the forest itself may soon develop its own solution to the problem. Lance, before you say anything else, I will tell you this: in the records of the Blade of Marmora, I read that a cadre of my Order was able to capture a Gantar ship, and that ship had a brood-chamber aboard it. There was an egg mass in there, and a few of the eggs were retained because the leader of that cadre wished to see if they could be raised up to view their fellow sentients as something other than food. It did not work, Lance. Right from the egg, those creatures are voracious predators, and if they cannot find other meat, they will devour their own kind. I observed much the same behavior in Earthly arachnids.”

“That's the Great Circle of Life for you,” Pidge said sourly. “Dear, sweet, kindly old Mother Nature is a screaming maniacal bitch a lot of the time, and not just on Earth. Nature selects for mean, which is why I like computers better. We won't get any better opportunity than this one, guys. Let's check out those ships.”

 

Coran ducked around a doorframe, squeezed off a couple of shots, and then threw himself back behind cover as the enemy returned fire. Stun rifles, of course, Gantarash never actually killed a victim if they could avoid it. Not before dinnertime, anyway. From the gallery above, Vennex fired a few times, paused to thumb a fresh charge into his rifle, and signaled to Coran that it was time to fall back a little further. The Gantarash were wearing full armor, and that made it difficult to make a dent in them, but there were ways around that; at the moment, the spiderlike aliens were certain of their eventual victory, and overconfidence was a killer no matter how good your equipment was.

Coran gave his partner a thumbs-up, a handy gesture learned from his Human friends, and leaped into plain view. He made a grotesque face at them, shouted a string of syllables in their native tongue that was, if not outright blasphemous, then extremely insulting, and then ran as though his pants were on fire back down the hall. A screeching bellow behind him informed him that his sally had hit its mark, and put on an extra burst of speed to propel himself through a particular doorway. The room he entered next was one of the secondary ballrooms, where Alfor's large and boisterous family had hosted those exclusive little parties for close friends and special envoys in better days. Right now, it was the place nearest the breach where the dragons had plenty of room to move, and were lying in wait with the mice perched on their shoulders.

_Excellent,_ Coran thought, ducking around behind Soluk. Lizenne's descriptions of how a dragon-pack preferred to hunt had stood them in good stead here, and he was perfectly willing to leave the hard job to someone who was better equipped to handle it.

A moment later, the first Gantar rushed into the room, and Coran reflected that the creatures had gotten bigger over the past ten thousand years. Bigger, but no brighter; the next one crowded in after the first with no evidence of caution at all, and it shrieked in surprise when Tilla pounced. At the same time, Soluk rammed the other one hard with one shoulder, the long spikes penetrating the armor quite handily, knocking off the helmet and tearing most of the backplate away. Vennex, who had settled himself atop the platform where the live musicians had once honored their art, took the opportunity to burst the Gantar's skull with a very creditable shot, and Coran followed suit when Tilla raked one clawed paw down her foe's flank, sending bits and pieces of armor flying.

The mice opened fire a moment later, sending a third Gantar staggering away howling with holes in its visor, and Coran couldn't help but let out a long, drawn-out whistle of admiration for Hunk's skills, and then finished the creature off before it could recover. More followed, and they were kept very busy after that. Oh, but his companions were magnificent, a distant part of Coran's mind thought as they moved to the ancient rhythm of combat, how fierce the dragons were as they slashed and savaged the enemy with claws, tail, and teeth, how excellently the mice rode upon those surging, scaly shoulders! They were turning out to be expert marksmice as well, given the circumstances, and sent their shots with pinpoint accuracy into joints and helmets. Even that poor lad Vennex was holding it together, even though he was starting to get more than a little wild around the eyes, and Coran was fairly sure that he himself hadn't fought so well even when accompanying Alfor and his team. Fabulous, absolutely fabulous, and it was a damned shame that the Castle's surveillance system was down right now, because he would have loved to have seen the recordings.

The fun ended when one of the Gantars flung some sort of weighted net over Tilla's back, and she let out a pained howl at the crackle of strange energies that resulted, and crumpled to her knees. Plachu and Chuchule had leaped clear, fortunately, and covered her while Coran darted forward to haul the filthy thing off of her.

It took some strength; the net had been woven of some sort of cable rather than cord, and Coran was glad of the armored gauntlets he wore as he yanked the thing away, hurling it over an advancing Gantar, which collapsed kicking and screaming to the deck. Tilla groaned and heaved herself to her feet, but she swayed dangerously and her eyes weren't focusing properly.

“Fall back!” Coran shouted, pointing a finger at a door off to their right and giving Tilla a shove in the right direction. “Fall back!”

Vennex leaped down from the platform, staggered but recovered, and helped Coran to hold the line while Soluk got his mate through the door. The mice zipped through after them, followed by Coran and Vennex. Coran turned, pulled the manual lever that slammed the blast doors closed, and then turned the big wheel-lock that had the emergency seals engaging. Coran's grandfather had been something of a historian, and had known the true purpose of any given fortification: the friendly people should be on the inside, the unfriendly ones should be on the outside, and it should be very, very difficult for the outsiders to come inside without an invitation. Something banged heavily on the other side of the door, but it held.

“That should hold the _tuaggols_ off for a bit,” he murmured. “Is everyone all right?”

The mice squeaked gamely enough, but Tilla had sagged to her haunches and was breathing in deep, slow breaths while her mate licked her face tenderly. She growled, and then uttered a long string of grunts and crackles that sounded like the very best soldier's vernacular. Coran patted her flank gently, noting that she would need a good brushing later.

“There now, old girl, you'll be fine,” he said soothingly, and then glanced back at the door with a frown. “Funny thing, them having a special net like that. Never saw that before, even back in Alfor's day, and we had to deal with them fairly frequently. They wouldn't use that sort of thing even on large animals, and your lot haven't been off planet since... since whenever. When was the last time your people traveled the starlanes, anyway?”

Soluk grunted noncommittally, and Tilla ignored the question in favor of standing up and giving herself a good shake, her spines rattling like castanets.

Coran knew when he wasn't likely to get an answer. “Well, we'll discuss it later, then. In the meantime, we'd better get to the next defensible position. That'll be down a level, but if we seal every door behind us, we should be able to slow them down long enough to effect some real attrition, particularly if the mice can get into the vents from there. Vennex, I'll need you to--”

There was a scrape, a clatter, and a whimper of distress. Vennex had been leaning against the wall, but had fallen to his knees and was sitting huddled there, arms wrapped around his torso, shoulders hunched, and was shaking visibly, and would have collapsed the rest of the way without the wall's support.

Coran was by his side immediately, one hand on his shoulder. “I say, sir, are you all right? You weren't hit, were you?”

Vennex didn't answer, and his face was a rictus of terror. Soluk churred, sniffed at the shuddering Galra, and uttered a familiar set of syllables—the same cantrip that Lizenne used to calm down the Paladins when they were worked up about something. Vennex gasped explosively, and patted the dragon's nose with a shaking hand.

“Thanks,” he said hoarsely. “Sorry. It's not usually that bad.”

“Panic attack?” Coran asked, helping him to his feet.

Vennex nodded jerkily, shouldering the rifle and looking up at the dragons; he'd gone pale under his fur, Coran noted, and he was sweating, and his eyes had a haunted look. “Doesn't happen often. I... well, this isn't the first time I've run into Gantars, and it's been... a very hard day. It's not over yet, and I don't feel good. The stink of them...”

Coran patted his shoulder sympathetically. “I know how you feel. It'll be some time before we get that funk out of the halls. We've some cleansers that'll do the trick, don't you worry. Work like a charm, so they do. Why, Trigel—that was the previous green Paladin—she once had one of those filthy creatures claw its way into the cockpit of her Lion, practically on top of her! She shot the thing and kicked it out, but not before it had gotten its goop all over everything. She was even greener than usual coming out of that, and we all had to help her scrub out the Lion three times before she was satisfied that we'd gotten the smell out. If we hadn't had aversions to Gantarash before then, we certainly had them afterward.”

Vennex had a quick mental flash of Zarkon, an Altean king, and their fellow heroes scrubbing floorplates with toothbrushes, and broke down into helpless chortles that were far too near to being tears for his comfort.  _Wow, this is a strange dream,_ he thought, although he did so mostly in self-defense. If he could keep on convincing himself that he was dreaming, he might get through this with some small vestige of sanity left over for later. Another heavy impact on the door sobered him, and he followed his oddly-assorted companions to their next destination. This involved descending a hidden stairwell that seemed to go down forever, and the dragons grunted and grumbled peevishly at the steepness and narrowness of the stairs.

“Big ship,” Vennex muttered.

“Well, it _is_ a castle,” Coran said with a certain amount of pride. “Very common the universe over, for royals to have big houses. It's a territory thing, really. Just about the only exception to the rule that I can think of offhand were the Handyman Emperors of Glashpin. Their residences weren't any larger than anyone else's, but they were a lot better designed and maintained. That people judged fitness to rule by how efficiently a person could build and take care of a standard housing unit, and competition was fierce. Lovely people, very clean, and fine musicians, too.”

“If you say so,” Vennex said, wondering just how many unlikely stories the Altean had, and whether or not he was making them up.

Coran gave him a suspicious look. “I should think that you'd be used to big ships. Those Imperial warships aren't exactly small, you know.”

Vennex shrugged. “Only on the outside. Have you any idea of how much room the drive and weapon systems take up, plus the plumbing, drone docks, supply storage, utilities, and air and water handlers? The command deck, crew and officer quarters, mess deck, medical, detention block, fighter deck, and all the rest of the ship that isn't just Sentry and drone territory, all of that makes up maybe a third of the whole thing, and only because they build 'em roomy. A soldier might spend his whole career in just one part of the ship, and it becomes his entire world after a while. It's easy to forget how big it really is, and the rest of the universe might as well not exist, except on screen.”

The Altean's eyes had developed a nostalgic sheen, and he sighed as he opened the door to the next level. “Been there a few times myself, back in the day. The Academy was very like that in spots, and my trainee years... well, let's just say that it took me a while to get used to natural sunlight again. Here we are, ladies and gentlemen, let's see how long it takes the enemy to figure out where we've gone.”

“Not long,” Vennex said darkly. “Gantarash have very acute senses of smell, and they'll follow our trail easily.”

Coran humphed. “Quite right. We might want to swing by the kitchen again for a bottle of tithra syrup. Alfor got one to sneeze itself to death with a bit of that. Very sharp, very pungent, and good on toast.”

Vennex shook his head. “I'm allergic. One whiff and I stop breathing, too. Got any extract of Litchvarian mint? That's nearly as good. Black's best, but the red'll do in a pinch.”

“Possibly,” Coran replied happily. “Hunk collects interesting extracts. Uses 'em to make ice cream. Take it from me, my boy, you haven't lived until you've tasted his ice cream! There may still be some in the freezer, in fact. Well, that's one more incentive to visit the kitchen, now isn't it?”

The mice squeaked enthusiastic agreement, and Soluk hummed happily. Tilla heaved a long sigh and gave Coran an exasperated, sidelong look out of three stern blue eyes, adding a string of hisses and crackles that sounded like a scolding.

Coran waggled a finger at her. “Morale, my dear, we have to keep it up somehow. I personally cannot think of a better way to defy a grotesque death than by eating ice cream in the face of it!”

_I cannot believe that I am doing this,_ Vennex thought again, followed by,  _Alteans are weird._ “Does this ship have any self-defense capabilities?” he asked, a little desperately.

“At the moment, not really,” Coran replied, sounding bizarrely unruffled by that. “There are some passive measures in effect—all the lift-platforms are in the basement, for example—and the odd ward-off system in the command and engine decks, those being the most sensitive parts of the Castle. Those will do to chase off the average marauding barbarian, but nothing more advanced than that, I'm afraid. The Gantars have managed to find a way to shut this whole place down completely. Not sure how. Never ran into anything like it.” Coran paused, his brows pinched in a frown for a long moment. “No, wait... I did hear a hint of a sort, just before Alfor shoved us into the cryopods. A message from one of the outermost patrols, very brief, and cut off halfway through. Zarkon and that hodgepodge of a fleet he'd scraped together was coming to Altea to demand the return of the black Lion. Someone was shouting in the background that their ships were going dead, and then there was nothing more from them. I did tell Alfor about it, but it was like he already knew. I never got the chance to ask him what it was. I don't suppose that you'd know?”

Vennex shook his head. “Not a clue. Believe me, if we had a way of shutting warships down at a distance, we'd be using that instead of those big cannons. Powering them is not cheap, and all too often, some trigger-happy officer winds up blowing apart vital structures on new planets that can take months or years to rebuild, even with drone and slave labor. My guess is that they get a kick out of seeing the pretty explosions. Conquering with fire and sword is fun, but it leaves a mess that's a real pain to clean up. I've heard that the green Paladin can shut down ships with her mind. We had to get an upgrade for our aetheric shields because of what happened at the Center.”

Coran smiled proudly. “Just one of her many talents, that. Don't play Dix-Par with her, either, she suckered an Unilu into giving her lessons. She's a wonderful young lady, and I have every confidence in her ability to fix this mess we're in.”

“Really?” Vennex asked, wincing at the faint but audible sound of a door one level up being forcibly removed from its frame. “How?”

“Don't know,” Coran admitted. “She, like the others, is a hero, and they have a tendency to do things just in the nick of time. We'll just have to wait and see.”

 

It was the waiting that was the problem. Perhaps no other race in the Empire had more experience in disabling and boarding starships than the Gantarash did, and it wasn't long before they found the stairs. The mice, who had ways of running reconnaissance that the others didn't, reported that teams of the invaders had split off from the main force and were heading for both the upper and lower levels, the better to keep the team from escaping. That was worrying news for Coran and the others. On the plus side, it thinned out their enemy's forces a bit. On the minus side, it meant that they would have to search every single level to be sure that they'd gotten all of them. In the meantime, they still had to deal with a considerable number of them, and had far fewer options to fall back on.

“The best we can do at this point is to barricade ourselves into one of these function rooms,” Coran observed after listening to Soluk translate the bluish mouse's latest report, another thing that Vennex was having trouble with; all of that squeaking and gronking sounded like pure animal noise to his untutored ears. “We'll have to wait them out as best we can until conditions improve.”

Vennex poked his head through a doorway that looked too narrow to admit a Gantar; Coran had led them into a service hallway that had been intended for servants bearing food and drink, and was by no means as wide or grand as the formal hallways. The room beyond was spacious and empty, although there was a large, dark stain on the ceiling. “How about this room, and what happened up there?”

Coran ducked under Vennex's arm to have a look, being somewhat shorter than the Galra, and peered up at the ceiling. Vennex was a bit surprised to hear him laugh. “The very place! Good choice, sir, very good choice. Just give me a minute--”

Coran slipped through the doorway and pulled open a hidden panel in the far wall, then spent a few minutes flipping switches and cranking handles. In response, a section of blank wall by the door parted and slid open wide enough to allow the dragons to enter, and slid back seamlessly once they had. Vennex stepped through his own portal, and wasn't particularly surprised when a section of wall slid almost magically over the frame to hide it.

“This is one of the old high-security rooms, retrofitted in during the reign of Alfor's father,” Coran said happily. “Pop-Pop came out of retirement especially to design it for him, the political situation being a bit tense at the time.”

Vennex glanced up at the stain on the ceiling again, which looked quite ominous. “Dynastic problems?”

“No, more's the pity,” Coran replied with a huff for past insults. “Alfor's family was very conscientious about documenting every last birth, even the... hmmm... _unofficial_ ones. Especially those, come to think of it. Scandals are only devastating if the participants try to cover them up, you know, and wars of succession are such messy things. Terrible wastes of time. Oh, no, this particular spat was with one of the more contentious peoples of that time, the Carlumnians. Same bunch who had that Crown Prince of yours assassinated.”

Vennex choked. “Prince Rhonorath. His death ruined everything. You were _negotiating_ with his murderers?”

Coran waved a hand at the ceiling. “Not me. I was still in elementary school at the time that this room was built, and King Angbard didn't trust those conniving pests any further than he could have thrown one. Less than that, actually. Old Angbard liked to practice weightlifting in his spare time, and was built like a tank. Carlumnians were weedy little fellows last I saw them, and Angbard might well have achieved a world record for delegate tossing.”

The stain on the ceiling was once again observed.

“About that far, maybe?” Vennex asked hopefully.

Coran chuckled. “'Fraid not. Angbard would've tossed 'em out the window, to hear my own father talk of it. Come to think of it, that wall over there opens up into windows, and when this ship was still on Altea, he kept the exercise yard for the guard-borbruns directly below them. No, that stain happened some time after the prince's assassination, when a different faction of Carlumnians tried to pull the same thing on us. The Carlumnians had ambitions of their own, and both your empire and Altea's were getting in their way. They liked divide-and-conquer tactics best, so they did, since it allowed them to swoop in and grab up all the best loot while the locals were tearing each other apart. After what happened to your people, Angbard wasn't having any.”

Tilla lifted her head to eye the dark smear thoughtfully, and grickled what sounded like a question.

Coran nodded. “Got it in one, dear lady. They'd sent in an assassin to infiltrate the Castle, looking for a bit of regicide to commit. Angbard did have several siblings, as did his Queen, and she'd just given birth to Alfor a few days prior. One of the guards happened to spot the creature, and there was a good deal of drama, a great deal of running about and screaming, several severe injuries among the guards, poor fellows, and it all ended here—just as Angbard had planned.”

“What's so special about this room?” Vennex asked.

Coran grinned and tugged on his mustache. “Once it's locked down, it stays that way until someone who knows the trick of it unlocks it manually, and it works even if the power's out. It's also constantly monitored by the Castle's AI from every angle for legal purposes, and—when the power's on, anyway—it can produce a floor-to-ceiling force-cylinder around any or all inhabitants, which can act both as a protective barrier and an inescapable prison. Angbard took the assassination attempt kind of personally, and told the ship to dispose of the intruder. Not many assassins can shrug off seven thousand decazopps of electricity, you know. Particularly not when they're carrying a pocketful of small explosives. The cleaning staff got the stains off of the floor, yeah, but left the one on the ceiling alone as a conversation piece. It made later talks ever so much more efficient. Especially when Angbard seated troublesome diplomats under the stain, and it dropped bits of soot on their heads.”

Vennex stared upwards again in perplexity for a few moments, then gave his companion a tentative smile. “I think that I might have liked the man.”

Coran chuckled. “We certainly did, despite Grandfather's grudge over the pool. A very popular monarch.”

The Altean returned to fiddling with the secret control panel at that point, leaving Vennex feeling somewhat at a loss again. For lack of anything better to do, he headed over to check the dragons for damage. They'd been right in the thick of the fight, after all, and it wasn't a good idea to ignore any wounds from a Gantarash weapon. Soluk whuffled quietly at his approach, but did not object to being inspected. Vennex couldn't help but be amazed after a few minutes; the dragon was smeared up to the shoulders with stinking greenish glop, but not one single scale was out of place and the big shoulder spikes hadn't even been blunted by the Gantars' tough chitin, or the armor for that matter. The huge claws were as sharp as ever, too.

Tilla looked to be similarly intact, although she would need a bath later as well; Vennex reflected that they all would, and rubbed one hand over her side to test for any sensitivity. “That net didn't do any real damage, did it?” he asked in a low voice, remembering how easily it had incapacitated the Gantar that Coran had thrown it at. “You look all right, but I can't be sure.”

Tilla rumbled reassuringly and nudged his shoulder gently with her nose.

Vennex smiled and looked up at the mice, who were chittering cheerfully among themselves and... yes, they were popping fresh, very small charges into their tiny little guns, looking for all the world like a band of warriors hashing out the tactics of their next strike. Vennex shook his head with a sigh and indulged in a moment's homesickness. It had been dull back at home, with little opportunity for adventure. He missed it terribly.

“What will happen next, if we survive this?” he asked the dragons in a shaking whisper, hearing the tremor in his voice and not caring.

Soluk shrugged, which didn't help. Still, he stayed close to them for the next little while. Something about their sheer bulk was comforting, and he needed that badly right now. After a time, inevitably, something banged hard on the hidden doors. Coran uttered a faint, disapproving _hmph_ and came over to listen carefully at the sealed portal, then took up a position to one side of the doorframe. That was only good sense, so Vennex and the dragons copied his action. Vennex was nervously checking the charge on his rifle when he registered, very faintly, a tremor in the decking that didn't match up with the impacts on the far side of the door. He knew that he hadn't imagined that when the dragons grunted faintly and glanced down at the floor. Coran tugged at his mustache, his attention wholly on the enemy, his pointed ears twitching as he gauged their progress.

“Two layers of best-quality blast shielding,” he muttered quietly, “it'll be some time before they get through that, at least.”

He was right; Vennex couldn't be sure, but it had to have been a quarter-hour at least before the monsters broke through. The heavy panels crumpled and fell inward with a dual crash, shoved aside by a pair of massive Gantarash. Tilla and Soluk bounced forward in unison, their great fanged jaws snapping closed over the invaders' heads and upper torsos. One quick bite was all it took, and Vennex realized that the dragons must be venomous—the Gantars thrashed once and fell over, twitching a few times before going still. Tilla gagged in disgust, blue tongue waggling at the foul taste of her victim, and Soluk wrinkled up his broad snout and spat a glob of something nasty onto the carcass of his.

There was a faint, chittering conversation from out in the hall—the sudden, lethal response to their fellows' entry had surprised the rest a bit, but Vennex knew that it was just a matter of time before they tried again. He was just nerving himself up for that attack when another of those phantom tremors quivered underfoot, almost imperceptible, and then again, much stronger this time. He actually heard it, too, as a subliminal rumble that made parts of his borrowed armor rattle. The Castle hummed in response, and Coran let out a triumphant whoop as the lights went from dim emergency blues to a much brighter warm white. There was a squawk of dismay from outside, and a roar of wrath; another Gantar threw itself into the room, the biggest that Vennex had ever seen, leaping over its fallen fellows and past the reach of the dragons, landing with a clatter and raising a huge stun cannon in all four graspers.

That was as far as it got. Just as Coran had described earlier, a transparent, pale-blue force-cylinder snapped into being around the Gantar, and Vennex shielded his eyes just in time. He could still see the bright flashes of light through his eyelids, and the helmet blocked some of the noise; not all of it, though, and when it stopped... well. It was just as well that the Castle had no cleaning staff right now, or they would have gone on strike.

“So,” Vennex said, staring with wide eyes at the small pile of twisted metal and carbonized chitin. “Seven thousand decazopps?”

Coran was tapping busily on his wristcomp, which had popped up a small screen full of mysterious symbols. “At the very least. Possibly eight or nine thousand; the cannon's power cell going up like that had to have been good for a few hundred extra, anyway. The Castle seems to be a bit miffed for some reason. All of the active anti-intruder measures have come online, and I do believe that we may now go on the offensive.”

The mice cheered and the dragons laughed evilly, and out in the hallway the Gantarash began to utter startled bellows. For the first time since the battle for Bericonde, Vennex felt his heart lift. “That is good news.”

“It is indeed,” Coran agreed, striking a dramatic pose. “Let us go and teach those filthy creatures that housebreaking is bad for their health.”

 

“Oh, ewwww.”

The rest agreed with Pidge's assessment wholeheartedly. The Gantar ships were disgusting, and they hadn't even entered the first one yet. Modhri and Zaianne had shown them how to pop the hatches and open the cargo doors from the outside, and the sheer intensity of the stench inside had driven them back. Even their armor's air filters couldn't quite strain it all out. Allowing the ships to air out a bit was absolutely necessary, and the team retreated back to the ruined control tower—upwind—to let them do so. The air seemed to shimmer in the moonlight as the fumes escaped.

“Gross,” Pidge added. “That's worse than Rh'attz's socks after a hard week. Modhri, are you sure that we'll find anyone alive in there? I'm close to suffocating all the way out here!”

Modhri nodded, face grim. “The meat larders are kept separate from the rest of the ship, with their own dedicated airhandling systems precisely for that reason. They still smell bad, alas, and the prisoners will need help getting out of the ships. The cages that they are kept in are very small and designed to restrict movement, so they'll be cramped and wobbly coming out. I warn you, they will be frantic to leave, and they probably won't be weak; Gantarash make sure that their captive feast meat is kept fat and juicy for the table.”

“What if they go on a hunger strike?” Hunk asked.

Modhri's face went even grimmer. “Then the Gantars force-feed them. I've had to deal with the results of that, too. It isn't pretty.”

“No, it is not,” Zaianne said in a low voice, giving the corpse-littered landing yard a hard look. “I've never had to clear a ship myself, but I've seen the reports of those who have. You'll have to take the lead in this. Just how much experience have you had?”

Modhri rubbed a long canine tooth thoughtfully with one thumb. “Enough. I captured my first Gantarash ship about six weeks after I was given command of my own craft, and continued to capture as many as I could until just before that last encounter. About... oh, perhaps twelve standard years. The other fleet captains thought that I was obsessed. They weren't far wrong, but most of them came around to my point of view when they saw my rescuees. Most of the victims were Galra, and no few of them were cubs. The leaders of that particular group of ship-clans had a taste for young meat. On one ship, they had a brain-damaged woman, and had been using her as a brood-mare for that purpose. She was heavily pregnant and in poor health. I killed the clan-leader of that craft with my own hands.”

Allura had gone sheet-white under her dusky skin tone, and the others were making sounds of horror and disgust. “I hope that you weren't quick about it,” she hissed savagely. “That poor woman!”

Modhri nodded, his expression taking on a feral cast and his clawed hands clenching into fists. “I smashed every joint it had with its own warhammers, crushed its mandibulae, and twisted its head off. I never learned that poor woman's name, but I made sure that she lived long enough to birth her last clutch of cubs, and found them a good foster home after she died. It was... it was all that I could do, and their foster mother formally adopted her as a sister and buried her with all honors. She also named the cleverest boy-cub for me, which is another kindness that I have never forgotten.”

Lizenne's hand stroked the fur behind one ear, and he relaxed visibly. “You've never told me this, Modhri.”

He gave her a sad smile. “I had far too many other things to worry about, and so did you. I've checked up on them now and again through the public records database. They're fine, and the children are doing well in school, and that's as close as I will come to them. They deserve their privacy.”

Lance groaned angrily. “You know, I thought that the Hoshinthra were bad. Well, they are bad, but not this bad! Those Doom Moose are as creepy as anything, but these guys really take the manwich here!”

Modhri chuckled softly. “I will not argue with that. The Hoshinthra are predators, but Shussshorim seems to be a special case, and has good reason to be what she is. The Gantarash have made a religion of it, and are convinced that they truly do have the right to feed on their neighbors.”

“There is no one half so dangerous as a person who is certain that he is right in all things,” Zaianne murmured sourly, casting a measuring look at the air above the ships. “The air's clearing.”

Shiro took a deep breath, coughed slightly from the residual fumes, and grimaced in distaste. “Let's get this over with, then. The sooner we get back to the Castle, the happier I'll be.”

“The Castle has showers,” Hunk said in a voice that quivered with longing, “and soap. I want all the soap, guys. And lots of hot water. And more soap. And then I'm going to make a sachet from some of the spices from the kitchen to keep in my pocket.”

“I'll sew the pouches if you make us some,” Lance offered, standing up. He was tired, his muscles stiff and sore from their efforts, and his stomach was upset from the reek of the Gantarash, but he was determined to see this through. If there was anyone still alive in those ships, then they had to be rescued. “Come on, guys.”

The nearest ship loomed ominously before them, its interior lit by the strangely inadequate blue-white lights, and the air inside was unpalatable but not stifling. It was also, once they'd passed through the main hatch, completely alien. Everywhere they had been during their adventures in space, every starship and habitation they had visited had been of a familiar sort. Residences had walls, ceilings, and floors, and most of the furniture and devices had been recognizable in form and function. Not so, here. The interior of the Gantar ship was more like the construction of a burrowing spider than anything else. Leading inward from the hatch, the wide hall was perfectly circular, the bottom third of the tubelike passage coated in a thick carpet of something pale and almost woolly. Above that were broad bands of ossuary ornamentation—an ornate pattern of bones cemented to the walls, mostly small bones and vertebrae set in twining patterns around skulls thick with intricate scrimshaw. It might have been beautiful, if it hadn't been made of people. Above those were the small blue-white lights, thousands of them in a long strip down the center of the ceiling, all half-concealed by sheets and billows of sheer silk that rippled in an unpleasantly organic fashion where the night breezes touched them. Pidge scowled and engaged her armor's wrist-comp, looking for lifesigns as Lance nudged the floor covering with one foot.

“I didn't know that they liked shag carpeting,” he said. “It's a little out of style back home right now, but--”

“It's not a carpet,” Pidge said, tapping at the small screen hovering above her wrist. “It's a fungal growth, and it's everywhere in here.”

Lance jerked his foot back. “Fungal? Like mushrooms?”

“Yup,” she replied. “Remember that Coran said that there weren't any sanitary arrangements on these ships? The fungus is what takes care of that.”

Allura gurgled in revulsion, and Lizenne put one hand over her eyes with a disgusted sigh; she wasn't wearing shoes. “Lovely. We'll all want to decontaminate thoroughly, and soon. Is there anyone here, Pidge?”

Pidge nodded. “Yeah. There are at least four people, all in one room in the middle of the ship, and getting there is going to be a pain. It's like a spaghetti bowl in here!”

Hunk scowled at her. “Pidge, you will not insult pasta in my presence again.”

Modhri pointed at a side passage that was only barely visible off to the left. “That way. Gantarash ships are all built alike, and echo the layout of a sacred place on their homeworld. Follow me, and be ready for trouble. Every ship has a brood-chamber, and it's always close to the meat larders. There is a chance that we might encounter a female with an egg-mass in one or more of these craft, although... Lance, you said that you saw little ones in the palace?”

“Tons of them,” Keith answered for his teammate, making a face. “Most of them weren't any bigger than, oh, about yea--” he approximated something roughly corgi-sized with his hands, “--but some of them were almost as big as Pidge.”

“Egglings and first-molt youths,” Zaianne said thoughtfully. “They may have been between breeding seasons. We can hope.”

Modhri led them at a brisk pace through the twisting tunnels, threading his way unerringly through a maze that would have baffled anyone else on the team. Twisting hallways that seemingly had no end, spherical rooms full of peculiar objects of mysterious function, all of them ornamented with bone-mosaics that peered sadly down at them with empty eyesockets. There was a silence in these halls that was almost worse than enemy voices.

At last, Modhri brought them to a broad door that was curiously unornamented, making it unique among the other portals they had seen. Modhri waved his transponder at it, and it slid aside, revealing a large and ugly chamber. Just as he had said, it smelled bad in here, although in a different way than the fungus-and-landfill smell of the rest of the ship. In here, it stank of unwashed non-insectoid bodies, foreign manures, and the sharp, sour odor of fear. The walls were lined with cramped, worryingly organic-looking cages in many sizes, and there was movement in a few of them. Pale eyes flashed at them from the nearest, and a hoarse voice cried out, “You—you aren't Gantars. Help! Help, please! Get us out of here!”

That was all that it took to galvanize the team into action. Bayards slashed through metal bars, and within minutes, they were helping the survivors stagger out through the tunnels, even carrying one in Lance's case. The delicately-built little female's legs had cramped up too badly to support her weight. The fresher air outside was greeted with glad cries and gasped prayers of thanks, and the team made them reasonably comfortable in the old control tower before heading to the next ship.

“A Jithrona, a Liettron, and two Threks,” Lizenne murmured grimly to the others. “This ship-clan has been hunting about in the Kitriol Sector, which was bold of them. There has been a 'destroy on sight' ordinance against them there for more than four thousand years, and it has been strictly enforced. Pidge, are there any more in here?”

Pidge looked up at the grisly decorations, and then down at her wrist-comp. “No. Not on this one. It's empty.”

“Small mercies,” Shiro said, taking a handful of dirt from a nearby pile and smearing the side of the ship with it to mark it as checked. “Let's try the next one. Allura, can you contact Coran from here and check up on how he's doing?”

“I can try,” Allura replied, keying her comm. “Coran, are you there?”

The comm crackled and emitted a horrible globbering shriek, which ended in a loud crash. Coran's voice came to them rather breathlessly a moment later. _“What? Ah—yes! Hello, Princess, glad to hear you, sorry about the noise, but we're a bit busy at the moment. Gantars, you know.”_

“We know,” she said with a smile. “We've pretty much run out of them on this end, thankfully, and are rescuing prisoners from their ships. Are you all right?”

There were three wet crunching noises, an electric crackle, and a high-pitched, agonized squeal. _“Oh, I'm fine, never better, and that Galra that the Hoshinthra gave us is holding up well enough, all things considered. The dragons are magnificent, as are the mice. Hunk, the arms and armor you made for them are excellent—whoops!”_ There was a sharp crack, and something large and very upset started howling. When he spoke again, Coran sounded very impressed. _“My goodness. If the ladies are with you, tell them that their hex-enhanced gladiator drone is coming in very handy. My word, very handy, indeed. I haven't seen that kind of footwork since someone slipped the Eastern Guaslinn Ice-Dancing troupe a few bottles of the Rejolian's finest, just before a major performance. Vennex, would you... oh, well done, sir.”_

“I thought that we junked that thing,” Hunk said with a suspicious look in Zaianne's direction.

She smirked at him. “Lizenne and I hexed another. We were saving it for later.”

There was a volley of small-arms fire, and a chorus of triumphant squeaking, followed by a shattering bellow from what may have been Soluk.

“ _Yes, yes, we'd be delighted,”_ Coran's voice said a little fuzzily through the noise. _“No need to be afraid, Vennex, it's just like riding a vherliol, only spikier and with just the one head. Oh, all right, and maybe six or eight times larger, but who's counting? Just duck under the lintels, man, you'll be doing that anyway. We've got them on the run, and I want to make them run_ faster _. Now, hop on up, don't keep Tilla waiting, and mind the sewing machine!”_

The team burst into laughter; to be fair, they couldn't help it. This was Coran at his silliest, and he was happening to someone else. It did them good, though, and they headed for the third ship in a far better mood than before. This was just as well, for its meat larder held more prisoners. Three Plaxines, two Foraminths, four Brillis, and a Ku'e joined the weary but deeply grateful collection in the control tower.

And so they went from ship to ship; several of the craft were empty of life, which was a mercy; those ships, quite aside from their gruesome decorations and their pervasive stink, were far too alien in aspect to be comfortable. By the time that they reached the last one, the moons were starting to sink toward the far horizon and there was a suggestion of light to the east, and the events of the night were starting to catch up with them.

“Last one,” Shiro said wearily, staring into the bluish-lit shadows of the tunnel. “Pidge?”

“Um,” Pidge said with a huge yawn. “Sorry. Five. That's weird. Three are in the usual spot, but there are two sort of off to the side, and one of those is big and... stacked?”

Modhri bent over to have a look at her screen. He was just as weary as the rest of them were and his wounded side was hurting him, but he had shown no inclination to call for even a short rest. His topaz eyes were as sharp as ever as he peered at the symbols, and he humphed disapprovingly at what he saw there. “Brood-chamber. That second signature is an egg-mass. The first is the female, and she will guard her eggs with her life. We have to hurry; ordinarily, she wouldn't leave the eggs for anything, but she's been stuck here all night with no one to bring her food. She might just feel hungry enough to raid the larder herself. I will warn you, as dangerous as other Gantarash are, they are as nothing to a brooding female.”

“A trait they share with us,” Lizenne said acidly, “and many others.”

Shiro sighed. “I'm not up to fighting a final boss right now. Let's see... I saw that in the other ships, the meat larders usually had two or three entrances. Can we go in through a different one, and lock it from the inside?”

Zaianne peered over Pidge's shoulder, her eyes tracing the maze of passages. “Yes. Here—if we go right rather than left at this intersection, we'll come in through that entrance. It'll take a little longer, but it will avoid the brood-chamber entirely. As for locking up, I don't know. Hunk?”

Hunk had been leaning against the hull of the ship, drooping visibly. “Huh? No. There aren't any locks on those doors. I've tried to get a feel for these guys' technology, but... ugh. Trying to work with it is like putting your bare arm up to the elbow into a bucket of live tarantulas. I can do it, but... _yeeeeugh._ I dunno, Pidge, would killing the ship's power do us any good?”

Pidge shook her head. “Nope. That would plunge us into total darkness, and all of the doors have manual systems. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to have to fight a final-boss Gantar in the dark with doors that we don't know how to work.”

“The long route it is, then, and we'll have to hope for the best,” Allura said, squaring her shoulders. “Lance, Keith, are you all right?”

The pair of them had been very quiet for the last little while; while this was nothing new in Keith's case, it was highly unusual for Lance. Keith looked up at her, his face strained. “Yeah, sorry. It's been a bad day, and that boost that the forest gave us has pretty much worn off.”

Lance looked not only strained, but ill. “What he said, and all of those cages and the bone art on the walls. It's really starting to get to me, Princess. I've got a big family at home, you see, and the thought of the Gantars going after them...”

Allura nodded sympathetically. “I feel much the same way. One of these creatures threatened to turn Quolothis into a breeding colony a mere few vargas ago. It spoke as though it thought that it was doing me a great favor, and that disgusts me! I _will not_ permit it!”

Shiro smiled. “Well, we've pretty much seen to it that this clan won't ever get that far. Let's get this over with, and then we can go see if Coran needs help cleaning up.”

They set out at the briskest pace that they could muster, their feet making nasty squishy noises in the fungal carpet. It was much more humid in there than in the other ships, with moisture dripping down the walls and gemming the silks that hung from the ceiling. It was oddly similar to the basement room in the palace that they'd fallen through a floor into earlier.

“The egg mass,” Modhri replied when Lance asked about that, “it requires moist conditions to incubate properly, and the Gantarash find it safer to raise the humidity over the whole ship than to confine it to a single chamber. The newly-hatched egglings need to stay damp for the first few days as well, to complete their development.”

Lizenne muttered something impolite. “Hunk, I may wind up fighting you for the soap.”

Hunk smiled. “Best two falls out of three. Nah, I'll share. You scrub my back and I'll scrub yours.”

“You're on,” she said, baring sharp teeth in a grimace of distaste. _“Tajvek._ While I am usually willing to concede that all living things have a right to exist, this sort of thing does put a strain on my sensibilities. Hmm.”

She took a sample bottle from her bag and plucked a tuft of the fungus from a handy hummock and a bit of the dark substrate that it grew on, then stuffed it into the bottle and capped it with satisfaction. “Who knows? This might tell us a few things.”

“Like what?” Lance said irritably. “That Gantars are gross? We know that already.”

She flashed him a quick smile. “It might give me a clue as to how their digestive systems work. They're able to metabolize a stunning range of proteins, many of which would kill you or I. If I can ascertain how they do that, I might be able to find something that will poison them without harming us, or at least make us taste so horrible that they'll leave us be. Right now, the only peoples that they'll avoid are organo-silicoid, like the Balmerans, or as violently toxic as the Tenechutlas, or as radioactive as the Yonilque, and a few other odd peoples.”

Keith hummed thoughtfully. “I wonder how the Hoshinthra rate on their menu.”

“They don't,” Pidge said. “When I was rigging the _Night Terror_ with the cloaking system, I saw a Gantar carapace hung on one wall. Just one, and still kind of smallish when compared to these guys. I can't say for sure, but I can guess that that one might have been acting on a dare. We can ask them later.”

“I'd rather not,” Allura said grimly. “I have had entirely enough of both predatory races right now, and--”

“Shhh!” Zaianne hissed.

They fell silent, and heard in the distance a high, thin shriek, and a deeper-toned, desperate scream that didn't come from an insect throat. Zaianne snarled and leaped into a run, forcing the others to scramble to keep up. Fortunately, they weren't far from the meat larder, and burst through the door just in time to see a monster preparing to feed.

The Gantar was massive, and so dark a red as to be nearly black, her coat of bristles so densely packed as to seem almost plush. Each protuberant black eye was as big as a fist, and gleamed with hunger, and something small and fluffy struggled and squeaked in one huge grasper. Adding to the noise was one of the occupants in a nearby cage, who was screaming threats and entreaties while slamming its body against the bars in a desperate attempt to escape. The Gantar, who had been lifting the small creature up to her mandibulae for a bite paused and looked around, startled at the team's sudden entrance, and then uttered a wrathful roar that shook drops of moisture down from the ceiling.

“Prey creatures!” she said in an unladylike baritone snarl, tossing her small captive aside with a contemptuous flick of a grasper. “You dare intrude into the sacred places of Ship-Clan Gznop-Pzak-Killipzerat! You dare interrupt my feeding! I will devour half your number and feed the rest to my children!”

Modhri replied with a sneer and a string of rasping syllables that meant nothing to his companions, but made the Gantar scream in fury and hurl herself forward, flailing madly with all four arms. The team scattered before her wild rush, slipping awkwardly on the fungal carpet. It was astonishing how quickly the huge arthropod could move, and how unstoppably. She danced with ease over the unstable footing, the heavy toe-claws finding purchase where the mere bipeds could not, and her thick chitin shrugged off blows from their weapons that had crippled other Gantars. Her hammering fists gave Hunk, Modhri, and Lance no time to get a shot off, and one arm snaked out and snapped Lizenne's stolen spear in half without effort. Zaianne tried to leap up onto the Gantar's back, going for a decapitation, only to be shaken off and kicked away. Rock-hard fists knocked the team about like tenpins, and the furious alien might as well have been invulnerable. Only Shiro's tambok-fang knife seemed to be able to make any difference, crunching into one leg and splitting the double-thick chitin. The Gantar screamed, more in outrage than anything else, and smashed him to the floor before he could dodge away. She lunged, and snatched him up in a pair of graspers, mandibulae spread wide for a killing bite.

Lance froze in terror at the sight as Keith yelled in anger and jabbed at her heavy body with his bayard, only to be swatted halfway across the room. He had to stop that monster somehow, but--

A drop of water fell from the ceiling to splash onto his nose, and that was all the inspiration he needed. Among all the others, only Keith's and Lance's talents had offensive capabilities, and Keith didn't dare use his here. Not in this enclosed space with unprotected captives. Lance, on the other hand, was surrounded by water. It was in the fungal carpet, all over the walls, on the ceiling... and in their foe. He knew a thing or two about water.

Looking inward, he opened up that special place beneath his heart where his Lion-given aetheric talent lived, and remembered that one cold year back home when the big frost had hit his mother's garden, leaving everything covered in sparkling white crystals.

Keith had landed near Lance, and had felt the rush of cold air before anyone else did, and heard the strangely delicate crackling sound of water being flash-frozen. He scrambled to his feet and threw himself at his teammate, knowing all too well what could happen if Lance didn't remember to move the side effects somewhere else.

Shiro hit the ground a moment later with a crunch of ice crystals, bruised and badly shaken. It was bad enough to come within a few inches of having your face bitten off by an angry spider-monster, but it was something else entirely to watch the creature freeze solid just before the fangs hit his throat. His panting breath fogged in the suddenly frigid air. _Ice,_ he thought dazedly, and then remembered what he'd been told of the fallout from Lance's new abilities.

“Lance!” he said, hauling himself upright.

“I've got him,” Keith panted, supporting his sagging teammate; they were standing at the center of a ring of sparkling ice crystals, and the floor under their feet was steaming. “Frosty the Airhead here got a little carried away.”

Lance grunted and draped an arm over Keith's shoulders. “I'd like to see you do any better, Mister Heat Miser. I stopped her, didn't I?”

“You certainly did,” Lizenne said, sounding impressed. “Very well done, the both of you.”

Shiro heaved a sigh of relief, then turned to retrieve his borrowed knife, which was still stuck in the Gantar's leg. “Good work, guys. Is everyone all right?”

“Bruised, dirty, and stinky, but we'll live,” Pidge reported. “Zaianne?”

“I will want a very long, hot bath, but I've had worse,” the Blade replied. “Modhri, what have you got there?”

“ _Aaaaieeep!”_ something small squealed, making them all look around in surprise. 

They knew that sound—a Galra cub. Modhri pulled something out from under one of the cages and stood up, revealing it to be the small life that they had saved on their arrival. The honey-amber eyes were wide and frightened and the fur was matted and dirty, but it seemed to be unharmed.

“My son!” a hoarse voice pleaded from a nearby cage. “Let me out! Let me out, please, that's my son!”

Pidge was there in a flash, her bayard slicing through the lock with ease, and she had to jump out of the way as a Galra man tumbled out of the narrow, noisome confines. He hit the floor in an awkward heap, rolled upright, and scrambled over to Modhri, who handed him his urgently-squeaking child. The man sagged to his knees, weeping with relief into the cub's fur.

Another voice off to one side said diffidently, “Excuse me, but if you don't mind, might I be freed as well?”

Pidge smiled at this civilized request and moved to help, freeing a tall, gangly individual who looked something like a grasshopper. “Terribly sorry,” the odd alien said, clinging to the bars to keep his wobbly, multijointed legs from spilling him onto the floor. “Having to rescue debilitated captives on top of fighting such a ghastly freak must be quite an imposition, but I do believe that it's part of the service. Yes, yes, I must agree with your fine lady over there, that was very well done. I shall have to remember that Gantarash do not do well in the cold, and take appropriate measures.”

Shiro grunted a laugh at this urbane speech and hauled at the knife, which was stuck. “Good luck finding a blast chiller that's big enough. You're welcome, though.”

He hauled on the knife again, and the Gantar's leg snapped in half, sending it over sideways to smash into pieces on the floor. They stared at the wreckage in mild amazement, knowing full well how cold it had to be in order to do that.

“Holy crap, Lance,” Hunk said.

“It did the job, didn't it?” Lance said defensively, trying to straighten up a little. “Let's get back to the Castle, all right? I'm all pooped out and I never want to do this again. Hunk, I'm gonna steal your soap.”

Despite this threat, it took them a little time to get moving. The grasshopper-like alien was having real trouble sorting out his legs, and the Galra man was so overcome by his and his son's rescue that he could barely move. During this time, Modhri took a moment to study the frozen Gantar, and humphed thoughtfully over some of the wreckage. Hearing this, Shiro decided to have a look as well. The fallen foe was terrible to behold, even in pieces, and even cryonic-grade freezing didn't put much of a dent in the way it smelled.

“This has to be the biggest one we've seen yet,” he said.

Modhri nodded. “The females do get bigger than the males, but this one was exceptional even for her kind. Look at the thickness of the chitin, and how heavy the bones are. From her size and the darkness of her coloration, I'd say that she was probably about forty or fifty years old. Very old indeed, for a Gantar, and she must have been an expert hunter.”

Shiro looked up in surprise. “How can you tell, and are their lifespans really that short?”

Modhri nodded. “The average Gantar might live about twenty-five to thirty years before something kills them. Not this woman, though. See here--” he indicated the long upper legs, the forearms, and the lower torso. “Clean. No signs of healed breakage or limb regrowth, and even at her size and age, she was very fast. Nothing ever got close enough to really hurt her. She must have been their most revered brood-queen, with traits like that.”

“Yeah,” Shiro said uneasily, staring at the Gantar's eyes, still angry under their coat of frost. “What was it that you said to her, that made her rage like that?”

Modhri smiled. “A combination of the worst insults that they've got. It translates roughly out as, 'Discarded crumb under the table at the Feast of Life, your eggs are suited only to be feast-meat for floor-fungus'. There is a bit more to it than that, but it was quite enough to make her too angry to think.”

Shiro winced, feeling the bruises forming across his chest where the Gantar had hit him. “Got that right. Looks like everyone's up and walking now. Shall we go?”

“Yes, and gladly,” Modhri replied, with feeling.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sound like a broken record, but as always, a big thank you to everyone who leaves kudos and comments. This fic just topped 200 kudos, and the only reason I'm not throwing confetti is that I've been barred from leaving the house. *does the sick zombie shuffle*


	31. Mopping Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who wished me well with my health. I'm better now, though sadly I ended up giving my "blessing" from Faerie Queen Influenza to the rest of my family, including Spanch. I THINK I've persuaded her not to kill me, but bodily harm is still likely on the table.
> 
> On an unrelated note, this is the penultimate chapter of this arc. After we finish up next chapter, we'll be taking our usual between-story break to generate more content and fight over the next title. And maybe persuade Spanch not to rip all my limbs off for giving her this nasty cold.

Chapter 31: Mopping Up

 

Dawn was just starting to break over the horizon when they exited the ship, the sun sending apricot streamers of light up to paint a few scattered clouds with the colors of molten gold. It was a wonderful sight, and the comparatively fresh air did much to revive their rescuees. Those that they had left dozing in the old control tower were glad to see them, and followed along quite willingly when the Paladins started making their way toward the Castle and the comforts that those white spires promised. Soap figured heavily among those comforts, and medical care, and a safe place to rest; the team looked forward to those just as eagerly as their new companions. Lance especially—freezing that Gantar solid had worn him out completely, and Keith was little better. When they paused for a rest in a handy clearing, Pidge gave Hunk a nudge.

“Check them, Hunk,” she said, flipping a finger at the pair.

Hunk complied immediately; indeed, he'd been watching them stumbling along with increasing worry in his eyes, and they hardly complained at all when he wrapped his arms around them and lifted them off of their feet. “At least a pound and a half lighter, each,” he told Pidge after a moment's consideration. “Both of you need to learn how to pace yourselves better. I'm gonna have to feed both of you up, you guys.”

Keith merely grunted, but Lance vented a heartfelt groan. “Not right now, Hunk. Feeling a little queasy here. Too much gross and stinky stuff.”

Hunk sat them back down on a handy fallen pillar and turned to Allura. “If you've still got a little extra energy, they could really use it. I'll share, too. Pidge? Shiro?”

Tired though they were, the Paladins linked arms with their fellows and relaxed, allowing Allura to draw from their reserves in order to revive Keith and Lance a little. She touched upon their hearts very gently, and then was surprised when she found a greater reservoir being offered. The Lions, although silent throughout this adventure, were not unaware of what was happening. The Lions were offering her power, far more than she could use, and far more than was safe.  _Only a little,_ she whispered to them, feeling the seduction of infinite energy and knowing it to be instantly addictive if not used with the greatest of care,  _only a very little. Enough to get us back to the Castle, and clean!_

The black Lion rumbled approvingly at her, and allowed only a tiny portion of his strength to pass to her through the Lion-bond, which she instantly passed into her team. They sighed in relief as their fatigue lifted, and their eyes were clear when they opened them again.

“Better,” Shiro remarked, straightening up a little, “thanks, Allura.”

“My pleasure,” she replied politely, “and theirs, too.”

Hunk rubbed at his belly. “Yeah, even if theirs doesn't taste like mint. I could really use some mint. I'm going to make mint ice cream when we get back, and I'll even share it 'cause I love you guys.”

Pidge, who also had a soft spot for mint, smiled at him. “You're the best, Hunk.”

“And don't you forget it,” he said, scooping her up and cuddling her a little. “We're almost there, now.”

Shiro nodded, gazing up through the branches to where the Castle's spires were a very welcome sight. “You're right. Another five or ten minutes of walking, and we should be at the doors. Lizenne? Modhri? Zaianne? Have they rested enough to get going again?”

The three Galra had been checking up on their rescuees, who, despite having been kept well-fed during their imprisonment, had not weathered the journey as well as they would have liked. Many of them had contracted a number of respiratory, dermal, and gastric ailments, and the cramped cages hadn't done their joints any good. “Just about, yes,” Lizenne replied, glints of gold flashing under her fingers as she eased an infected scratch on one alien's back. “We're almost there, everybody, take heart! There might be a little cleanup work to do once we get there, but we'll be safe from harm. Come on, up now. One last push.”

The rescuees groaned a little, but heaved themselves to their feet and followed along regardless, supporting each other where necessary. Shiro saw the Galra man, his baby held tight in his arms, stumble over a half-buried stone and hurried to catch him before he fell. The man hadn't been sleeping, he saw from the reddened eyes and sunken features, and was nearing exhaustion. The cub, on the other hand, had the inexhaustible energy of the very young, and squeaked and swatted defiantly at Shiro, showing tiny fangs as he tried to defend his father from this looming stranger.

“Hold onto me,” he said soothingly, pulling the Galra's arm over his shoulders. “We'll get you there. That's a cute kid.”

The man had enough spirit left to smile faintly at the praise for his son, and got a grip on Shiro's shoulder. “He is,” the man whispered softly. “Thank you for rescuing us.”

“Thank Modhri,” Shiro said, giving credit where it was due and nodding at that worthy. “None of us knew that Gantarash kept prisoners like that until he told us, except maybe Zaianne. How did you two wind up in there?”

The man shuddered. “My son contracted a serious disease, one that our local medical station couldn't handle. We had to go offworld, to the Tharkoran Hospital. My wife wanted to make a family trip of it, for the nearby museums. Thank all the Gods that something came up at work, and that she was forced to send me and Ranax here off alone on the public shuttle. And I had thought it to be a great misfortune at the time!”

Shiro looked down at the cub, who was trying to gnaw on his breastplate and not having much luck. “They were able to cure whatever he had, at least.”

The cub's father snorted in bleak amusement. “Oh, yes. He inherited a strong constitution from my wife's side of the family. Thanks to his mother's good blood, he responded very well to the treatment, and we were out and on the shuttle home in very good time. And then the Gantarash attacked. Ranax and I and that Xelocian over there are the only survivors, out of a group of fifty-seven. The Gantarash ate all the rest. I think that they were saving Ranax for something special.”

Ranax looked up and squeaked peevishly at Shiro, possibly telling him that he tasted bad.

Shiro eased the man carefully around a fallen tree. “Well, we happened first. We'll tell you all about it when you're in any state to listen. Where are you from? You'll need to call your wife and tell her that you're all right.”

The man shivered again and let out a long, shaking breath. “Arcobi. Gods, Gods, poor Helitha, she'll be frantic by now, and our entire Lineage as well! I must contact them as soon as possible—my grandfather can't take that sort of stress, and Ranax is his favorite. Please, at the first opportunity, I must make that call!”

Shiro looked up at the shining peaks of the Castle, coming closer with every step they took. Also visible was the dark tear in the central tower. “We'll do our best.”

 

Hunk was close enough to have heard that exchange, and his heart ached for the poor fellow. He knew what it was like to be torn away from a loving family and held against his will. Oh, all right, so bonding with the Lions wasn't anything like being stuffed into a tiny cage with nothing better to do than be cooked and eaten by monsters, but it had still been pretty hard. It also made him lonely, and when he was lonely, he wanted hugs. Looking around at the others, he saw that they were for the most part engaged in helping the rescuees. Pidge, however, was too short for most of the aliens to lean on, and was close enough to grab. She was also eminently huggable, which was even better, so he gathered her up into his arms between one step and the next.

“I'm fine, Hunk,” she sighed tolerantly.

“Yeah, but I'm not,” he replied. “It's been a bad day.”

She glanced back over his shoulder at the weary crowd behind them. “For everybody, except maybe Coran. Or the mice. Probably the mice. They always have fun.”

Hunk rolled his eyes. “Oh, god, the mice. Sometimes I think that they're the real heroes of this outfit, and we're just their stunt doubles.”

Pidge giggled. “Maybe. We're certainly doing all the work.”

After a time, Lance came up beside them, cocking a puzzled look at Pidge. “Got a leg cramp or something?”

She shrugged. “Nope. I'm apparently cuddly, and he needs someone to cuddle. I'm not going to complain. My feet hurt.”

Lance hummed thoughtfully, and then smiled. “I get it. Hey, Hunk, can I have some of that?”

Hunk smirked. “Sure. Catch.”

Pidge squeaked as she was tossed gently into Lance's arms. “Guys, I said 'just this once'! No more hot potato!”

“Believe, me, this potato isn't hot anymore,” Lance said, giving her a squeeze. “Definitely cold potatoes right now, leftover from last night, but maybe still good to fry up for breakfast. Ugh. Or maybe not. My stomach's still upset.”

Hunk made a beckoning motion with both hands. “Well, if you don't want any, I'd like some more.”

“Sure thing, Hunk,” Lance said, passing her back.

Pidge glared at him, but knew where this was going. “You two doofballs are going to be passing me back and forth the whole way back, aren't you?”

Lance grinned. “Yeah, pretty much. I could use another dose in a minute, Hunk.”

“She's good for what ails you,” Hunk said happily, bouncing Pidge gently in his arms before handing her over.

Pidge sighed, but let them have their fun. It was harmless, and her feet really did hurt.

 

Vennex wasn't feeling well. Not physically, so much—his guts were a little unsettled from the smell of the enemy, that was natural and expected. It was his mind that was the problem.  _Too many shocks,_ he thought numbly as he hauled yet another dead Gantar toward the Castle's main doors.  _Far too many shocks in too short a time._ He felt as though he wasn't really there, that everything was moving in a sort of fog, that he was made of spun glass and would shatter into splinters at a touch. He wanted to collapse, he wanted to explode, he wanted to evaporate into thin air; sitting down and bursting into tears was also an option, but he hadn't the time for it right now. It was more important, very much more important that every last one of these filthy monsters was to be thrown out of the Castle as soon as possible. At least they were dead. Some of them were very dead. The ones that had gotten into the training deck were  _impossibly_ dead, and that was giving him some real problems right now.

He didn't even flinch when the gladiator drone came around the corner and took the carcass from him. The gladiator drone wasn't a problem. None of them were, not even the one that had been loaded with an entire girl's school's worth of small evil hexes, even though it brought back all sorts of childhood memories that he would have preferred remain buried. No, he might even be able to develop a fondness for those big white robots later on, when his emotions had stopped flatlining. Even the little round ones with the lasers deserved his respect, and he could admit that without any shame at all. Or the floating platters from the kitchen and the hover-chairs from the dining room, those had caused a surprising amount of damage, and that mad sewing machine was a mighty warrior in its own right. The fact that he could accept the sewing machine as such worried him a little; dreaming was one thing. Going mad was quite another. That the Altean was already there and enjoying it did not help.

Vennex would have been perfectly happy to stay in that conference room and let the Castle's systems deal with the invaders, but Coran wouldn't hear of it. No, that madman had taken them right back out into the thick of the chaos, shouting what Vennex assumed were ancient Altean battlecries the whole way. At least, he hoped that they were battlecries. Some of them had sounded very rude. Either way, the Castle itself had participated in full; walls had slammed together to crush the Gantars flat here and there, or ceilings had done the same with floors. Sometimes the floor panels had retracted, dropping the Gantarash through to splatter themselves all over the floor three levels down, and the training drones had come swarming out of the middle decks. All armed, all armored, and moving with xenocidal intent.

From somewhere in the upper decks had come the kitchenware and seating arrangements, all of them in serried ranks following an airborne sewing machine. That terrible device had come in firing industrial-gauge needles into Gantarash eyes and bashing in Gantarash skulls with terrible brute force, clicking menacingly the whole way. From the lower decks came the industrial drones that presumably looked after the pod shuttles and landing craft, their clamps, cutters, and welders at the ready. There were passive defenses too, or at least that was what Coran had called them. This was a blatant lie if the noises from the engine deck were anything to go by. The screams of horror, all cut off suddenly, certainly suggested something other than a mere warn-off. It was definitely safe to say that Coran's grandfather had absolutely loathed Gantarash. On top of all of that had been the heroic charge. Coran had bullied him into climbing up onto Tilla's shoulders to sit behind the mice and help them shoot down the enemy from there. He remembered the huge surge of those powerful shoulders as the dragon hurled them into the fray, but after that, things got kind of fuzzy. He remembered shooting until the power pack in his rifle died, and then hitting monsters with the butt of it. He remembered a great deal of roaring, including some from both himself and the mice. He remembered seeing the dragons ripping the enemy apart with fang and claw, or knocking them into the path of the drones. He certainly remembered the hexed gladiator that had caused havoc with every strike of its staff. The stinky spell in particular, which had filled the entire level with the potent fragrance of Litchvarian black mint, sweet balm to Vennex's nostrils at that time, but sheerest olfactory agony to the Gantar that was suddenly emitting it. Beyond that, the details were a blur.

He had been snapped back to cold reality when they'd reached the training deck. That particular series of rooms had been empty of drones. Every last white-plated death machine had abandoned that deck, and for good reason. Oh, the Gantarash had gone down there as well, but they had all been dead when he, Coran, the mice, and the dragons had arrived. Very, very dead. So dead that the drones were having to use the shovels and wheelbarrows from the hydroponics section to remove all the parts. In the center of the carnage, spinning in mid-air like the needle of an old-fashioned magnetic compass, had been a bone spear. It had gleamed like a lance of moonlight and was tipped with a shard of cold flame, and it had snarled like something out of a nightmare as it rotated in slow circles, seeking fresh blood. That had been too much for all of them, and they had backed very quietly away, heading on to the next level in a silence thick with gratitude that it had let them leave that deck alive.

The  _coup de grace_ had come when the remaining Gantarash had run into them on one of the middle decks, and Coran had lured the monsters into a certain, particularly large and empty room. The Gantarash, agitated past rational thought by the sudden violence of the Castle's defense systems—and possibly by the little butt-waggling shimmy-dance that Coran had performed for them—had charged all at once. They had made it about halfway across the room before Chulatt had fired a single burst up at the ceiling, which had destabilized the frozen pool. Vennex was fairly sure that the sound of twenty or so Gantarash being crushed beneath roughly a thousand tons of falling ice would haunt his dreams for months. Coran had come within a hand's breadth of being crushed by the avalanche as well, not that it seemed to have bothered him much. The drones were still trying to clean  _that_ mess up, too.

At least it was over now, save for the cleanup, and the drones were handling most of that. Visible in the dawn light outside of the doors was a large and growing pile of Gantar carcasses. As he watched, another one hit the pile from above, having been shoved out of one of the upper-deck airlocks, and the impact scattered bits all over the place. Vaguely sickened by that, Vennex turned and leaned against a handy dragon, closing his eyes and struggling for something like inner balance. Soluk, who had been helping with removing the dead Gantars as well, whiffled his helmet gently and sat still in sympathetic silence. Unfortunately, it didn't last.

“There you are, Vennex!” Coran's voice said nearby, sounding disgustingly pleased with himself. “Chin up, my lad, we've won the day, and our gallant heroes are returning even as I speak! Oh, my, and with a fair amount of company, too. Still, it's not hostile company, so that's a point in our favor, at least. I've about had it with monsters.”

Vennex stood very still, hoping that this particular mustachioed monster would go away, now that he had someone else to exhort. Thankfully, it worked. From the sound of it, Coran had moved a little way toward the doors.

“There you are, Paladins, right and tight and gloriously triumphant! Sorry about the mess, we had a bit of trouble on our end, but nothing that we couldn't handle. Oh, and Keith, you wouldn't be up to melting a bit of ice, would you? Only the pool fell on about twenty-odd Gantars, and that's a bit much for the drones to handle.”

A young man's voice muttered something that sounded very rude in response to that request.

“Well! There's no call for that sort of language, young man. Lance, it's just frozen water, could you just--”

Another young man reiterated the first one's suggestion, with a few add-ons of his own.

“ _Lance!_ Hold your filthy tongue, boy! I'll have you know that suggestions like that could get you into real trouble in the future, especially if we should meet with Kimlits or Berspegorians. Real sticklers for civil discourse, they were, and when confronted with impertinent potty-mouths like you, they would—hey!”

Soluk grunted and moved suddenly, spinning Vennex around in a half-circle, just in time to catch a large, startled object that yelped in protest when it hit his breastplate. Vennex looked down to see a small person cradled in his arms, and one that was frighteningly familiar.

“The... the green Paladin?” Vennex managed, holding her as if she were about to explode.

“Yeah,” she replied with an exasperated glance at her teammates. “Lance threw me at Coran's head and missed. Put me down, please.”

Vennex lowered her onto her feet with great care and watched her trot off. “That was the actual green Paladin,” he whimpered to himself, unable to believe what had just happened.

A heavy arm draped itself over his shoulders, and Vennex couldn't help but see the yellow accents on the armor. “Yeah,” said a friendly voice in his ear. “She's a sweetie, once you get to know her. Well, more of a snarky, but that's geniuses for you.”

“I dunno, I've always thought of her as a sneaky,” a young man in blue-accented armor said, coming up beside them. “Especially after her stay on the _Quandary._ Or maybe a salty. Heh. Right now she's a stinky, just like everyone else.”

A young man in red-accented armor came up from behind and nudged at the yellow one. “Too true. Hunk, you'd better go look and see if you can still make ice cream.”

“Aaah! My kitchen!” the yellow Paladin yelped, removing his arm from Vennex's shoulders. “I am _not_ cooking anything in a room that's got cosmic death spider all over it! Be back in a tick, guys.”

Vennex's mind had frozen over, feeling as thin and cold and fragile as glare ice. All it would take was one more tiny thing to leave it all in pieces...

A smaller, lighter hand landed on his shoulder, and he turned his head to see the rose-accented armor. “Coran says that you were a great help,” said the woman who had nearly killed the Emperor, smiling prettily at him. “Thank you.”

It was too much. Vennex thumped down onto the floor and burst into helpless tears.

“What's wrong with him?” an older man's voice asked. “Was he hurt?”

“Just post-combat nerves,” Coran replied. “Also, post-nearly-being-killed-and-eaten-twice-in-a-row-by-two-different-kinds-of-monster nerves. Been there myself a few times, back in the day. Why, Alfor and his team had to have gotten themselves acquainted with just about every headhunter and maneater in known space by the end of things, and guess who had to be on hand to patch them up? Got a little gnawed myself, now and again, but I never failed to make them sorry for it! The Wildmen of Woggilon, for example--”

“That's enough, Coran,” the man said, with just enough command in his tone to shut the mad Altean up, and Vennex felt a strong hand take hold of his arm. “Right now, it's more important to get this ship and everybody in it cleaned up and cared for. Come on, pal, you're safe now. We need some help with the rescuees; one of them has a cub.”

Vennex actually felt his instincts kicking in at that word. Even if the world was unraveling beneath his feet, the welfare of a child was more important than his own private difficulties. He heaved a shaking sigh and looked up. He'd seen this man before as well, in news articles, official dossiers, and wanted posters.

“Aren't you supposed to be dead?” Vennex asked. “Rumor has it that Haggar dragged you into her lab and...”

The Champion gave him an ironic smile and tugged lightly on his arm. “I got better. Come on, people need help, and there's only us here to help them.”

Somewhere nearby, the cub squealed shrilly, a summons that Vennex could not ignore. He nodded jerkily and hauled himself to his feet, only to hear the woman's voice again.

“Coran, did you write that on the back of his armor?”

“No, that was Blaytz, right after that argument over their respective bad habits. He and Zarkon disagreed frequently about class relations, and Blaytz tended to make his opinions clear in other ways than words, now and again.”

“Wait, what?” the red Paladin said. “You mean that's Zarkon's old armor? What does that say?”

The woman humphed primly. “Loosely translated, it means, _'This person needs a swift kick up the pants. Please oblige.'”_

The Champion chuckled. “It looks like our friend here has already had a few too many of those. How many levels were affected?”

“Most of them,” Coran said sourly. “They got into the emergency stairwell. I'm pretty sure we've cleared the lot, though. Oh, and Lizenne? You'll want to have a talk with that spear of yours. You left it in the training deck, and it... well, it doesn't like Gantarash either. Or much of anyone else right now.”

A tall, attractive woman who had also featured frequently in the wanted posters waved an elegant hand. “They react that way to anyone who has no right to handle them. You can always tell a fake by the way that it doesn't kill an enemy when he picks it up; another reason why they aren't often made, I might add. I'll go and calm it down. Pidge, please find Hunk and ask him to help you query the Castle as to the extent of the mess? Repairs will have to wait, but we should get as much of the carnage outside and on fire as soon as we can. Modhri tells me that as bad as they smell now, a decomposing Gantar smells ten times worse.”

“That is not possible,” the green Paladin retorted, but she hurried right along to the lifts.

In doing so, she passed Tilla, who was homing in on the witch with a steely look in her six blue eyes. The dragon proceeded to the center of the room, then sat down on her haunches and launched into a crackling, gronking diatribe that lasted several minutes and ended in a loud, wet raspberry.

“What was all that about?” the blue Paladin asked.

Lizenne laughed and rubbed wearily at her face. “She says that our choice of planets leaves much to be desired, that the Fates have an extremely inappropriate sense of humor, that Gantarash are horrible and taste as bad as they smell, that she wants us to go and retrieve the _Chimera_ right this second, and that if we don't hunt that yulpadi soon, she will not only take matters into her own hands, she will not share the kill. We're in real danger of missing out on a good stew, Lance.”

The blue Paladin waggled a finger at the dragon. “Over my frozen corpse, Tilla. All right, everyone who's still up for garbage duty, come help us clean up so that we can have a nice, hot, soapy shower and a really big dinner. And sleep. Lots of sleep. Nice sleep that nobody's going to interrupt with a bunch of cosmic death spiders. I hate cosmic death spiders. We are done with cosmic death spiders and will set them on fire when we've gotten what's left of them out of here.”

There was a smattering of laughter and a few cheers from the ragged rescuees, and the atmosphere lightened somewhat. Vennex heaved a deep breath and looked around for the cub, the fact that the black Paladins had both thanked him and had even called him 'friend' looming large in his mind. Perhaps things would turn out all right after all.

 

“Last one, guys,” Hunk said wearily, leaning heavily on a wall and summoning the lift. “Castle says that it caught one Gantar up there trying to hotwire the bridge. Might still be alive.”

“It's alive,” Pidge said sourly, “but pretty banged up. It got up on the pilot's platform, you know, right under the crystal? Bug zapper.”

Keith let out a breathless laugh that had little to do with humor. While checking every level in the Castle had been uneventful, it had been a terrible strain on their already tired bodies. No few of them were envying Lizenne, Coran, the mice, and Zaianne right now, who had stayed downstairs to keep an eye on Vennex and the rescuees. At least their jobs didn't involve so much walking.

Lance groaned. “Y'know, we could have called a Lion or two to bring us all home. Saved us a little effort maybe.”

Modhri shook his head. “That would have done more harm than good. The hangar doors in the towers didn't weather our descent very well. They would have had to break their way out, and that might have damaged the Lions as well. The rescuees might have panicked at the sight of them, perhaps injuring themselves. Too late now.”

Shiro shrugged. “Let's get this over with, then. Maybe it'll leave without a fight. We did defeat its entire clan.”

“No,” Modhri said grimly, “it won't. Gantarash do not ever give up. They feel that a brave show, even in the face of oblivion, is a moral obligation—a sign of respect to their gods, their kin, and their prey. Respect, both in the giving and the receiving of it, is very important to them.”

The lift doors slid open, and Shiro stepped inside, holding the doors for the rest of them. “That big female didn't show us any.”

Modhri smiled. “Well, we were horribly rude to her. We'd broken the rules of a Ritual Hunt, killed her clanmates, invaded her home, intruded upon her personal space without invitation, interrupted her breakfast, and then insulted her personally. Besides, she was brooding, and that makes them short-tempered. We might as well have... ouch.”

“Modhri!” Allura said, “Your wound!”

He had stepped aside to allow Hunk past him, and had turned his upper torso a little too quickly; dark wet stains were showing through the dressing over his injury. “Yes, I know. I'll have Lizenne look at it after we're done here. I will finish this, Princess. I have a duty.”

The others weren't sure what he meant by this, but there was iron in his voice when he said it. Nobody argued with him when he put his foot down like that, not even Lizenne. They rode up to the bridge in grim silence, and approached the bridge doors with care; it was ominously quiet up here, with the thick, expectant silence of something dangerous lying in wait.

They weren't disappointed. The doors slid open smoothly, revealing a familiar figure lying slumped against the pilot's dais and the smell of burning garbage hot in the air. Charred and broken by the Castle's wrath though it was, this was the Gantar whose image they had seen at the beginning of the hunt. It pulled itself up at their approach, dribbling green fluids from cracked chitin, but it stood proudly despite its injuries. “Feast meat,” it rasped, “I thank you for this test of our faith.”

The Paladins raised their weapons, but a gesture from Modhri had them standing down, staring at him in confusion. “Gzrak-Zop-Kazza,” he said quietly. “You are out of your usual territory, Ship-Lord. Who did you inherit this one from, or are you poaching?”

“Modhri,” Keith hissed at him, “you know this guy?”

The Gantar made a sizzling noise that might have been amusement. “Ship-Lord Modhri-Khorex-Var. It is gratifying to see you again. My Ship-Clan inherited this region from Ship-Clan Kzox-Hikka-Zakkirrik, which you destroyed. It is most honorable to contend with so dangerous a foe. We sorrowed at your disappearance. It is no shame to have fallen before you now.”

Modhri nodded. “I counted you and your Ship-Clan to be worthy adversaries, which you have proven once again to be. Your gods will receive you with honors at the Feast of Life.”

“I can hope,” the Gantar said with surprising modesty and lifted a small device in one grasper. “I have informed the Council of Lords of the details of this Hunt, and they listen even now. Your status has risen, Modhri-Khorex-Var. Your present Ship-Clan has achieved much, for all that it is most oddly assorted. Three great rarities, and a people that is unknown to us. And yet, so few. A mere Maiden's Spawning of a Clan, no more than sixteen members, and still they have defeated a Ship-Clan that numbered in the hundreds.”

“My mate is a potent witch, her sister a great warrior,” Modhri replied gravely. “The rest are equally great. The ship itself is mighty. I am not Lord of the Ship-Clan here, but I am respected by my kin.”

The Gantar rasped again. “Such becoming modesty is a pleasure to see in so great a warrior. Nevertheless, the Council must be informed. Modhri-Khorex-Var, your people are well-known to us, and the Histories tell us much of the might of the Alteans and Zampedri. There is even mention of the small partnered creatures, the Mice. We do not know who these five are. Aliens, speak! Who are you? It is vital that we know, that you might be assigned to the proper List!”

Shiro was damned if he was going to give the Gantarash any clues at all. “We are the Paladins of Voltron. That's all that you need to know.”

“Aaah,” the Gantar breathed, its black insect eyes gleaming glassily in the light. “That explains much. Well do my people remember that device. Such was its power that we did not mourn its dismantling. We had heard of its revival, but did not expect to face its avatars again. There are so many better targets for its wrath these days. I am most gratified that the Mother of the Gods has brought you to us. Such a challenge! Such a great challenge for both of us, and the Gods will receive our sacrifices eagerly and with all honors.”

Modhri dipped a slight bow toward the Gantar. “That is so. Shall we end this, Gzrak-Zop-Kazza?”

“We shall, Modhri-Khorex-Var,” the Gantar said, tucking the communicator away in what was left of its silks. “Indeed, we must. The Gods demand it. Your places on the List of the Greatly Preferred Ones are assured, as are ours, and we will all of us surely become the foundations of greatness in the Next Universe. Be ready!”

It charged, hurling itself toward them in a powerful lunge. Modhri whipped his gun up and fired it even as Hunk and Lance did, and the unarmored alien came to pieces under that hail of fire. It crashed to the floor at their feet, dead. Modhri saluted it grimly and holstered his blaster.

“Yes, Keith, I knew this one,” He said quietly and stepped away from the smoking corpse. “His Ship-Clan and three others were raiding freely around the region of space that was under my fleet's protection, and I did my best to stop them. I tried to learn why they are as they are, and to understand them, the better to make my fleet more able to deal with their kind. I cannot approve of their way of life, but I can respect the depth of their faith and parts of their morality. We'll have to be careful around them in the future; every ship-clan will now see us as a challenge to be taken up instantly, for even losing to us will guarantee them a ticket to their version of Paradise.”

“Wonderful,” Shiro grunted, eyeing the twitching carcass with distaste. “Well, let's get this mess cleaned up. After that, we can rest.”

 

_And_ get clean. Coran's grandfather had also given the aftermath of a Gantarash invasion some thought, and the Castle was fully able to produce an amazing variety of cleansers, both for personal and industrial use. Coran himself had handed out bottle after bottle of something creamy and greenish, “--with real extract of hantic tea leaves!” Coran had stated happily. “Just the thing for unhappy skin, that, and it banishes bad odors in a trice. Pop-Pop did love his little trips to Zampedri, and always came back with plenty of treasure!”

That raised a cheer from everybody, and they all headed for the shower room on the training deck, it being the one sanitary facility that could handle them all at once. Even the dragons joined in, flopping down under the hot-water nozzles and demanding a good scrub. They got it; everyone got one, and the air was soon thick with the sweet herbal scent of hantic leaf, although not everyone found it to be a pleasant odor.

“ _Eeek!”_ Plachu complained, wriggling in Lance's hand. _“Eeek eep pfeh! Phiff! Phiff!”_

Lance shifted his grip on the mouse and applied the toothbrush that he was using to scrub the small creature with vigorously. “Quit wiggling, Plachu, you stink just as much as the rest of us do. If you want to sleep on my pillow again, you're not going to do it while smelling like death spider. Behave, will you? Look, Platt's not giving _him_ any trouble.”

Indeed, Platt was flat on his back in Vennex's hand, barely visible in a mass of fragrant suds while the rather put-upon-looking Galra scrubbed him down.

Plachu was not impressed. _“Feh!”_

Despite the mouse's opinion on the subject, Lance made sure that he was thoroughly clean before sluicing him off under the showerhead. By that time, Platt had finished as well, and they both scampered off in the direction of the drying tubes. Vennex was now patiently scrubbing Gantar stink out of Chulatt's fur, which the tiny mouse seemed to be enjoying, and Chuchule was sitting on Lance's foot and squeaking for a turn. Lance bent and lifted the little pink mouse, who, if Coran was to be believed, was a mighty hero and a stalwart defender of the Castle.

Lance eyed the Galra man as he lathered Chuchule up. Vennex, according to Coran, had also been a stalwart defender, and Zaianne had deemed him to be a decent fellow who had worked diligently with the others to get the worst of the mess cleaned up. What Lance saw now was a man so far out at the end of his rope that he couldn't see the post anymore.

“So, uh...” Lance said carefully. “Did the mice really shoot down half of the enemy all by themselves?”

“I wasn't counting,” Vennex replied in a weary voice, his brush negotiating the tricky spots around Chulatt's delicate ears. “They got more than I did. I had a sergeant once that would have given someone's _hapleks_ for a quartet of snipers that were half as good as they are.”

“ _Eek,”_ Chulatt said proudly, holding up two tiny paws, _“Pew! Pew! Pew! Eeek-eek, squeak!”_

“I'll bet,” Lance said. “It's sort of traditional, though, isn't it? When a guy has to wear those helmets, it messes with his aim some, right?”

“Some,” Vennex said neutrally. “We're expected to be proficient with our weapons, but it's the Sentries who do most of the shooting. Anyone who does become a crack shot or a better-than-average swordsman is usually snapped up by one or another of the Special Forces, or assigned to somebody's personal guard troop. Or promoted, if he can prove his worth by fighting a superior officer for the rank.”

Lance gave his companion a measuring look and remembered a few stories that Modhri had told him. “To the death, right?”

“Pretty much. The Emperor won't put up with dead weight in command. Either you've got what it takes to lead, or someone takes it off of your corpse. The rest of us do as we're told.”

“Sounds rough,” Lance said, thinking back on his days in Galaxy Garrison and wondering how he had survived being so callow. “So, why did you join up?”

Vennex smiled. It wasn't much of one, being thin and self-depreciating. “I was trying to follow in the footsteps of a hero.”

Lance glanced over at the far side of the room, where Shiro was rinsing off his third coat of suds. “No kidding? Who?”

Vennex shook his head, his expression turning angry. “No one you'd know. No one that anyone knows anymore. He fought against evil and saved hundreds of lives, but his name was struck off of the records when some idiot Lieutenant accused him of—ouch!”

“Aaaieeep!” said something at shin level. _“Sniz!”_

They looked down to see a rogue clump of greenish, herbal-smelling bubbles clinging to Vennex's leg. It sneezed again and glared up at them with angry amber eyes. Lance snorted a laugh, rinsed Chuchule off and transferred her to his shoulder, then picked the soapy cub up off of the floor. “Oh, you're a cutie!” he cooed, tucking the cub into the crook of his arm and holding him under the shower stream, rubbing his free hand through the wet fluff to get the soap out. “Yes you are, you're a cute little fuzzball, aren't you? Yes you are! You smell all nice now, and we're going to dry you out so you're all poofy, and I'm gonna sew you up some big toys to play with so we don't have to worry so much about you biting us on the legs all the time.”

“ _Eeephpppbbbtt!”_ the cub protested, spluttering under the spray, but didn't struggle. Something about Lance's baby prattle seemed to calm him, and he was clinging to Lance's arm with his little head resting against Lance's shoulder by the time that the worried father came trotting up, obviously searching for his wandering offspring.

“I'm sorry,” the man said, retrieving his child. “Ranax doesn't like the soap much and got away from me.”

Lance smiled nostalgically, feeling just a bit homesick. “Trenosh, right? Don't worry about it. You should've seen what some of my cousins got up to, trying to avoid bathtime.”

“Yes, and this one's siblings are no different.” Trenosh chuckled and held his soggy son close. “Your teammate, the yellow Paladin... Hunk, wasn't it? He asked me to tell you that he was heading up to the kitchen, and would appreciate any help that you could give him.”

“Gotcha, thanks,” Lance replied. The shower had worked a magic all of its own on him, and his belly was starting to become aware of the fact that lunch had been a very long time ago. He cast a sidelong look at Vennex, who was rinsing Chulatt. “Want to tag along, Vennex? It means that you get first crack at the food.”

“That might be nice,” Vennex allowed, “Soluk and the mice got most of my breakfast.”

“Yeah, they'll do that if you let them,” Lance said, and watched the Galra man carefully for a moment. There was something about the way that he was moving, a sort of slow, careful deliberation, that told him that something was wrong. “Are you all right?”

Vennex put the mouse down gently and straightened up, turning glassy yellow eyes to meet his own. “Not really. I was taken by Hoshinthra, bones broken, poisoned, nearly frozen, and then rescued from certain death. I was given something to drink and then was placed in a healpod. When I woke up, I was somewhere else, lost in a haunted labyrinth, and then found by a group of myths, and then the ship was invaded by half a ship-clan of Gantarash. I have been bullied by a member of an extinct race, served as a backup gunner for a team of marksmen mice, ridden a dragon, destroyed deadly foes while wearing the Emperor's trainee armor, have been accepted as a friend by the foremost enemies of the Empire, and now I have seen some of the Paladins naked. The only reason why I have not collapsed in screaming fits is that I've gone numb. Nothing could surprise me now, because I don't have any left.”

“Hmmm,” Lance said, considering that statement. “You need some normal. Hunk's good at normal. Maybe he's got some roots for us to peel, or something.”

Vennex scratched thoughtfully at one ear. “Sounds good to me.”

 

Someone had thought ahead, they found a short time later; just outside of the shower room, a row of curtained booths and a large table had been set up and piled with clothing, simple garments in a dozen configurations that would serve to replace the torn and irrevocably stained clothes that the rescuees had discarded before bathing. Lance suspected that Hunk or Pidge had sweet-talked his sewing machine into helping because the loose, comfortable trousers he slid on didn't give him a wedgie, which the products of the autotailor invariably did. He glanced down at his torso as he was pulling on a shirt and saw that his ribs were a bit more visible than they had been when he'd last seen them; freezing that Gantar had taken a lot out of him. On the other hand, it meant that he could have as much dessert as he liked. Thinking happy thoughts about mint ice cream, he headed up to the kitchen, Vennex trailing tamely behind him.

Hunk wasn't alone, of course. Hunk had come from a loving home where cooking was a family affair, and he liked having company. Lizenne and Zaianne were chopping and seasoning, Allura was measuring spices, and Modhri was stirring several pots at once. A sniff of the air told Lance that Hunk had pulled out every recipe in his “quick and easy” file, and was preparing them all at once.

“Yeah, we got lucky this time,” Hunk was telling Allura over the sizzling of his wok, “all those people we rescued can eat pretty much the same stuff that we can. I've already got the special orders done and keeping warm, but the next time we visit with the _Quandary,_ I'm gonna need the rest of Ronok's cookbook if we're going to be fighting Gantars again.”

“We'll need to swing by the Fleet anyway, if only to reassure them that we still exist,” Allura replied, capping a bottle of something savory. “And to retrieve Nasty. Oh, dear. Kolivan will give us one of his Looks for disappearing again, won't he?”

Hunk laughed and tossed the contents of his wok into a large serving bowl. “Hey, if he didn't know already how big a trouble magnet we are... oh, hey, Lance, Vennex. Grab those slicers and start in on the boiled eggs. Modhri, did you get the eggs shelled out?”

“Of course,” Modhri said pleasantly, picking up a bowl of pale-yellow ovoids, “these are quolka eggs. If you don't get the shells off of those immediately, they stick in there like glue, and you'll make a terrible mess trying to get them out.”

Lance had grabbed his egg slicer, but Vennex hadn't. The man had gone very still and was staring at Modhri, a look of confusion and disbelief on his face. As the older man turned to place the eggs on the counter before them, Vennex drew in a sharp breath and asked, _“Uncle Modhri?”_

Modhri looked up at him, startled, and all work in the kitchen paused. “Modhri, just how many nephews do you have?” Allura asked.

“More than I had thought, apparently,” Modhri said, studying the younger man's face curiously. “Not a blood relative, I think; the Ghurap'Han Matriarchs have kept my family from taking mates from the Colonies for the whole time they've had us under their thumb. Where do you know me from, lad?”

“You don't remember?” Vennex asked plaintively. “We met ten years ago. You pulled me out of a cage in a Gantarash ship with your own hands.”

Modhri blinked, and then recognition dawned. “Near Shethwan's third moon. That ship-clan had hit a space station, taking every soul aboard alive, and I and five other destroyers had been chasing them for weeks. Some of my fellow commanders had had family among the abductees.”

Vennex swallowed hard. “They'd eaten my father and four of my brothers. You let me claim you as uncle until you could get me home.”

“Yes! I remember you now,” Modhri said, snapping his fingers. “Vennex Erath'Khosek, of Kheriphor Colony. You had told me that you, your father, and your four brothers had been visiting Forax Station to oversee a big shipment of goods, just before the raid happened. Your mother made the adoption formal, she was that glad to have you back. I only wish that I had caught those monsters earlier.”

“You said.” Vennex had to steady himself on the counter. “I swore that I would be like you when I was old enough. I would join the Military and command a warship, and I would fight the Gantarash until there weren't any left. I watched your career the whole time, all through training and mandatory service, and then... and then...”

Modhri sighed. “And then Lieutenant Narax had me disgraced and sent back to the Center in bonds, where I vanished from public view. It's just as well. When Haggar had done with me, I wasn't a pretty sight.”

Vennex gurgled in horror.

Lance pulled an egg from the bowl and fed it into the egg slicer, sending perfect yellow circles with bright orange centers onto a waiting platter. “Yeah, and then Shiro busted you up, and they tossed you in the trash.”

“And I retrieved what was left, and rebuilt him,” Lizenne said, her voice hard. “Zarkon and Haggar have a deep dislike of heroes, Vennex, and destroy them whenever they can. That is one of the reasons for my declaration of _kheshveg_ against them, but by no means the only one.”

Vennex's shocked eyes turned to Lizenne. “And you're the Rogue Witch. Why did you help him?”

She smiled and waved a phor bulb at him. “Our Lineages are very closely aligned. We grew up together, and I was determined to have him as my husband when we came of age. My Matriarch wouldn't have it, and sent him off to our local military Academy the moment that he was old enough, while at the same time affiancing me against my will to the least worthwhile son of the Szaah'Tirr Lineage that she could find. The events that followed that played out like a second-rate soap opera. We'll happily tell you all of the sordid details later on; right now, getting the household fed and bedded down comfortably is far more important.”

Modhri gave him that special, sweet smile that always warmed and brightened everything around him. “Dead though I might be in the Empire's records, I am still alive and still your uncle, Vennex, if you'll have me.”

Vennex groaned and half-fell into Modhri's arms, wrapping his own around Modhri's shoulders and holding on tight. Lance sighed enviously. “Crud. Modhri, you're too good at that. Now I want a hug.”

Modhri snorted in amusement, patting Vennex's back. “Finish the eggs first, Lance. Vennex needs this more than you do. Zaianne, would you please mind the pots? I need a moment.”

Zaianne smiled and abandoned her cutting board. “Certainly.”

Hunk threw Lance a grin over his shoulder and piled a load of noodles into the wok. “Give me a minute and I'll give you one of mine.”

Lance grinned back. “You're on. Sorry Modhri, Hunk's the only one who can give Hunk-hugs, and he's the best.”

Modhri merely smiled. “Of course.”

 

Dinner was a delicious, although mostly silent affair; everybody was too busy getting all of that food inside of them to bother with speech beyond “please pass the paslen”. Only Ranax did much talking, and he did it in loud, demanding squeaks as if telling everyone that he had a lot of growing to do before he could take on space monsters all by himself, and he need to fuel those all-important growth spurts _right now._ As a result, he got a taste of almost everything, and watching him going cross-eyed trying to slurp down the fried noodles was very funny.

After that, there was a general exodus toward the guest quarters that Coran had arranged; the exhausted Paladins headed for their rooms as well, and were out cold almost before their heads had hit their pillows. Modhri had seen to it that Vennex was resting comfortably in his room as a long-lost uncle should, and then joined Coran and the ladies in the kitchen where they were washing the tureens and platters that wouldn't fit in the cleansers. Zaianne greeted him with a large bowl that had held the promised mint ice cream, and had been licked absolutely spotless.

“That went well,” Coran observed once the last of the dishes were put away. “Enemies defeated, prisoners rescued, victory celebrated, and nobody seriously injured or chewed on. Oh—save you, Modhri. You're doing all right, aren't you?”

“Better than I was,” Modhri replied, touching the fresh dressing on his side. “We'll all be sleeping late tomorrow, though. Are all the hatches locked, Coran? There are still Gantarash out there. We might have dealt with the adults, but we couldn't spare the time or energy to deal with the young ones, and they climb very well.”

“All holds barred,” Coran reassured him. “We've run into those in the past, Alfor and I. I was especially careful about the area around the breach. Lance isn't the only one who's had it up to here with cosmic death spiders.”

“Good enough,” Zaianne said, rubbing wearily at her eyes. “Bedtime, I think. Tomorrow is soon enough to worry about such things.”

“An excellent idea,” Coran said with a huge yawn. “Goodnight all, then, and we'll grump at each other over our morning tea on the morrow.”

Zaianne followed him out of the kitchen, leaving Lizenne and Modhri alone. They stood quietly for a little time, leaning on each other and enjoying each other's presence. Eventually, Modhri brushed his wife's cheek with one hand and asked, “Did the spear give you any trouble?”

She made a faint sound of amusement. “Not really. Gantarash are not its intended prey, but I had the impression that it enjoyed the exercise.”

Modhri humphed faintly. “Bloodthirsty thing. Well, it saved Coran and the others a bit of work, at least. Ah. I feel that I have rather overdone it today.”

“We all have,” she murmured, and patted his belly. “Let us go and sleep it off like sensible people, then.”

“As you wish, my Lady.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are wonderful reminders that people enjoy our crazed ramblings. They are chicken soup for our writer souls, our snuggly blankets of joy, and the sweet tea of accomplishment. So if you enjoyed what you read today, or just have a thought you want to share, drop us a line. They make us both seriously happy, and Spanch less murderous. ^_^


	32. Off To A Fresh Start

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is, the final chapter of Chresmology. It's been a ride, hasn't it? As has become our custom, we'll be taking a short break from updating so that we can get a respectable amount of the next story written and stockpiled. Also so we can once again argue with each other about a proper title. Time for another cage match pillow fight...

Chapter 32: Off To A Fresh Start

 

Allura woke the following morning slowly, reluctantly, and very late. She was also stiff and sore, and the only thing that prevented her from going right back to sleep was the fact that her belly felt like an empty pit. She knew what that was all about, of course. Minor though her aetheric activity had been yesterday—Ancients, had it been only yesterday?—it had put a strain on her system. All of that energy had to come from somewhere, and by refusing to use energy drawn from other sources, all she had to draw on was her own reserves. Oh, well, at least she had a teammate who could make refueling herself into an episode of culinary delight. A glance at her timepiece told her that if she wanted some of that culinary delight, she'd better get a move on. Hunk loved to cook, but they had a houseful of guests right now that would provide some considerable competition for the best dishes. Groaning at the necessity, she pulled on some clean clothing, made a mental note to speak to Lance later about some casual wear, and gathered up her mice. They, at least, seemed to be as perky as ever, and chittered eagerly at the prospect of breakfast.

The long table in the dining room was both crowded and cluttered, and showed signs of having seen several courses as the morning had progressed. Stacks of plates and bins of cutlery stood at intervals down the middle of the table, and huge bowls and platters full of fragrant foods clustered in glorious profusion along a long sideboard that Coran must have dug out of one of the old storerooms. Some of her teammates were already there, seated among the throng, and she smiled to see Keith feeding bits of tanrook bun to the very bouncy and eager Galra cub while the child's father took the opportunity to feed himself. The cheerful roar of conversation brought back happy memories of her own childhood, and she piled a plate with a selection of her favorites and plopped down in a vacant chair to eat.

Once the edge was off her appetite, she started taking a little more interest in the crowd of people all around her, which was surprisingly varied. Some were familiar faces, peoples that she had seen or studied during her girlhood, and others were completely foreign to her. Surprisingly, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the only Galra among them were Trenosh and his son. Gantarash loved Galra, she had been told, and that only two had survived out of what might have been dozens was grim proof of that.

Her musings were interrupted when Lance thumped down beside her, still in his pajamas and bathrobe and bearing two plates piled high with food. He looked as though he had only just hauled himself out of bed, with his hair sticking out every which way and his eyes squinched nearly shut. “Good morning,” she said.

He grunted and took a sip from his glass. “Don't talk to me, I'm not awake yet. My stomach forced the rest of me down here at gunpoint. Yup, yup, it was like, 'fly this thing down to the kitchen right now, or I unleash the hunger pangs'. Freezing that Gantar was a lot of work.”

“I can believe it,” Allura said, watching him dig eagerly and ungracefully into his food. “We're really going to have to find a way to balance that sort of thing out, and to control it better. The Lions will help where they can, but it's dangerous.”

Lance nodded and peered narrowly at Keith, who now had the cub cuddled up in his arms. “Yeah, you felt that too? That's probably what got Zarkon started as a Quintessence junkie. We could round-table it, like another one of those circle sessions, only with Shiro in on it this time. Might be able to come up with something that way. Oh, that's right, and we need to get him over to Omorog. Loliqua needs to teach him some stuff.”

Allura smiled at the thought of another visit. “That might be a very good idea. Professional Oracles, particularly strong and accurate ones, are very rare. He needs to learn to use the gift that Tzairona gave him, and she may be the only one able to teach him.”

Lance grunted again. “Ghost gifts. Weird. Here we are, wandering around in the world of science fiction, and we keep on knocking into old fantasy tropes. We've even got dragons, and we've just trashed a dungeon. Where are the dragons, anyway? I didn't see them.”

Allura shrugged. “I don't know. It's possible that they're still asleep, or have already eaten, or are having their breakfast in some other part of the Castle. They are quite large, and it's very crowded in here.”

Lance burped. “Makes sense. Platt's just stolen your toast.”

“I know, that's why I took an extra slice.” She watched the fat mouse carrying the buttered bread away. “It doesn't taste as good if it isn't stolen, I guess. They _are_ mice, after all.”

Lance snorted in amusement. “Some of my cousins are like that. Dad used to call Carlos a crumb-snatching ankle-biter, and he wasn't wrong. Mom used to have to lock up all of the cookies and candy and things if Aunt Lucia was coming to visit and bringing her kids along, and even then we had to shake him down before they left. It was amazing how he could fill his pockets even with all the cupboard doors locked, and if he got within ten feet of your toy box... well, you just had to make sure that he didn't.”

Allura giggled. “Talented.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lance said darkly. “My sister Veronica once said that if he didn't wind up in jail for bank robbery when he grew up, he'd find a job in the IRS as a collections agent. Speaking of busted vaults, are you up to helping us fix the ship today?”

“I should be,” Allura replied, forking up another bite of her breakfast and checking her bond with the Castle. “I doubt that we'll have much trouble this time. The Castle is terribly embarrassed about its behavior yesterday, for all that it allowed us to rescue all of these people and remove a serious threat from this region of space. We should be able to leave orbit by evening, or sooner.”

“Good! That's very good, and most kind of you, Mistress,” a new voice said, and they looked up to see the peculiarly grasshopper-like alien that had been rescued along with Trenosh and Ranax the previous day. He looked better now, his intricately-patterned carapace clean and glossy and his compound eyes jewel-bright. “You are the black and blue Paladins, Sir and Mistress?”

“We are,” Allura said, “although I share my title with Shiro over there. “What can we do for you?”

The alien bowed jerkily. “You are already doing it, for which you must be thanked. I assume that you will repatriate us to our homes as events permit? A terrible imposition, but I expect that you'll be happier without all of us getting underfoot.”

“We'll do our best,” Lance said. “We'll be meeting up with the Ghost Fleet again soon, and they can get people to where they're going with a whole lot less drama than we usually manage. Where are you from?”

The alien waggled a slim upper hand. “Alas, I am well away from the planet of my birth. I am Jilphix-Farr, scion of the Hilchen'Farr'Enox Trading Clan, and was sent out to research new markets well away from home. It was a mission of great ambition and trust, for I do not rank lowly among my kin. I hail from Xelocia, and that may be a difficult place for the Emperor's unfavorite peoples to approach.”

Lance perked up. “Xelocia?”

Jilphix-Farr's antennae twitched in surprise. “Yes. Perhaps a sad location; for my rescue, you will be owed a considerable reward, and it will not be easy for us to celebrate you properly without attracting unwanted attention.”

In a twinkling, Lance was up and at his side. “How big of a reward can we ask for?”

Allura frowned at him. “Lance, this is no time to be greedy! Your manners, sir!”

“Cool it, Allura, this is important,” Lance said, drawing the bewildered Xelocian off to one side and whispering in the general direction of his hearing apparatus.

The Xelocian listened carefully, and then blinked in surprise. “That's _all?”_ he demanded.

“Believe it or not, that's enough for me,” Lance replied, and flicked a finger at Shiro, who was talking with one of the other aliens. “I'll need a little extra to practice on, but picture him in that, and later on, he'll be even buffer.”

Jilphix-Farr studied Shiro for a moment, and his vestigial wings flushed pink. “Oh, my. Now, usually, I'm not inclined to admire mammals in that fashion, but...”

“Yeah,” Lance said with a broad smile. “He's exceptional, and I can admire him all I want. Can you arrange it?”

Jilphix-Farr tapped a finger against his mandibles. “Quite handily. I've got a large crate of remnants of all colors, some quite sizeable, and a bolt of black that has been sitting in storage for years. No market for it lately, it's not a terribly popular color where I come from, and they're taking up space that would be better filled by more profitable wares. If you feel that you can trust your allies to carry them to you safely, there is no reason why I can't send them along. Hmm. Silver accents, you said?”

“Oh, heck yeah,” Lance replied, “and if that crate has enough of the right colors, the rest of us can have one, too.”

“I shall see to it,” Jilphix-Farr said, rasping his wing-cases together humorously. “I'll want pictures.”

Lance waggled a finger at him. “Only if you sign a non-disclosure agreement. If there is going to be universe-wide Paladin-porn happening, I want a cut of the profits.”

The Xelocian perked up. “Ah! We can negotiate. Rights of Distribution are very important, as are advertisements. This could be lucrative for both of us, and revolutions always require revenue...”

Lance offered him a sly smirk. “Yeah. How about we go and talk somewhere in private?”

“We might at that!” Jilphix-Farr said cheerily. “But I must warn you, good Sir, that I am accounted to be a skilled negotiator!”

Lance patted his upper shoulder. “Cool. I've been getting lessons from an Unilu, and he says I'm pretty good.”

“Better and better, good Sir, for I was required to test myself against them frequently. Indeed, let us engage skills in a quiet place.”

The pair of them headed out of the room, and Allura wondered if she should tag along to referee. She needn't have worried, for Zaianne had overheard that little discussion, and had a few things to say to them both. Whatever that was, it didn't displease them, and the three of them were soon out of sight. With a sigh, she noticed that the mice were busily stealing Lance's leftovers, and finished her own meal before they could steal hers as well.

Once she had finished, she deposited her dishes in the cleanser and headed for the bridge. Coran was already there when she arrived, running diagnostics from the look of the screens he'd pulled up. “How bad is it, Coran?”

Coran didn't even look around, and his fingers danced on the controls as view after view of the ship's decks popped up, flanked by streams of data. “On the whole, not as bad as it could have been, Princess,” he replied. “The hangar doors are still stuck and there's still a great big hole in the side of the main tower, but the invasion didn't cause all that much extra damage. I got some of the industrial-grade drones working on the pool room, and they've pretty much gotten that clear. Still smells like a midden in there, but the cleaning drones should be able to handle that. They were trying to take the Castle more or less intact, believe it or not. The energy discharge that charbroiled the Ship-Lord up here might've given us a bit of trouble if we'd had to leave in a hurry, but the crystal recharged while we were all sleeping. Still, the sooner that we get this craft fixed up, the better.”

“Give them a little longer, Coran,” Allura said, inspecting the pilot's dais for damage and Gantar stink, “Hunk's still in the kitchen, Lance is negotiating with a Xelocian, and Keith is playing with the baby. I'm not sure where Pidge is, or Shiro, or Lizenne or Modhri, or the dragons, for that matter. I haven't seen your comrade-in-arms, either.”

“Hmm. Well, we can check,” Coran tapped his controls again, and a few new screens popped up. “I'd be very surprised if he's even out of bed yet, to tell you the truth. Vennex is a good lad, but he'd taken a number of bad shocks even before we found ourselves up to the ears in Gantarash, and Modhri mixed him up something to help him sleep. One of Lizenne's little recipes, I think. Well, there are the dragons, fast asleep in their nest, poor things. Remind me to show you the recordings of our mighty battle against the foe that the security system got after the power came back on. They were very impressive. Aha, and there's Pidge, holed up in her lab and doing science to something. There's Lance... my goodness, look at the rank-marks on the dorsal carapace and rear legs. That's a merchant prince!”

Allura nodded. “Yes, he did say as much. A very pleasant fellow, I found.”

“They tend to be, and if things go well—aha, Zaianne's there to make sure that they do—we may find ourselves with a valuable ally. They do produce other things than silk, you know, and their trade networks went _everywhere,_ even back in Alfor's day.” Coran considered that for a moment, gazing fondly at the screen as the Paladin and the Xelocian gesticulated at each other, obviously having a great deal of fun. “Oh, yes, a very useful ally indeed. As for the others... let's see, Shiro's still in the dining room, swapping daring-rescue stories with our guests. Hunk's still in the kitchen, making... ooh, those fried knozwhack dumplings look good. Keith is in the lounge now, with... aww.”

Someone had spread a blanket on the floor of the lounge, and Keith was flat on his belly in the middle of it with a short length of soft rope in one hand and playing tug-of-war with Ranax. The cub was hauling furiously on his end of the cord and squeaking in excitement while his father sat nearby, sipping a cup of tea. Keith let go of the rope, and the cub dragged it off under the table to gloat over his victory.

Coran tugged at his mustache. “Adorable. I was able to let Trenosh contact his family earlier this morning, by the way. Poor fellow, his family had been frantic over their disappearance and were overjoyed to see them safe and sound. Their home isn't too far from Bericonde, and we'll be able to drop them off with no trouble.”

“That's good,” Allura murmured, watching fondly as Ranax brought the rope back for another game. “And will they be another vital ally, I wonder?”

Coran shrugged. “Only if Hunk needs canned goods or fresh greens. They run a grocery store. It's quite a good grocery store, but unless we can weaponize frozen pulpeas, we're out of luck there.”

Allura glanced at Hunk's screen, where one of the guests was getting a lesson on how to properly crimp knozwhack dumplings. “Never underestimate the power of a master cook, Coran. But where are Lizenne and Modhri?”

Coran hummed thoughtfully, his fingers touching this control and that. “I saw Lizenne about earlier, but she's not in a public area right now. Hold on, I'll contact her. Sister Dearest, you seem to have vanished. Where are you?”

“ _In our room, for the moment,”_ Lizenne replied, another small screen popping up. _“Modhri kept a brave face on it yesterday, but that wound of his was worse than we had thought, and he overexerted himself into the bargain.”_

“Will he be all right?” Allura asked anxiously; in truth, Modhri had become as dear to her as any of her blood relatives had been.

Lizenne made a soothing gesture. _“I've healed the wound and have settled him down for a long sleep; he'll be fine, but he still thinks that he's stronger than he actually is. He needs to be reminded of the reality every so often, I'm afraid, but he takes his duties to the Pack very seriously. Is Hunk still in the kitchen?”_

“Making knozwhack dumplings,” Allura replied, knowing full well how draining healing magic could be. “If you hurry, you'll get them fresh from the pan. Is Vennex all right? I haven't seen him.”

Lizenne puffed a faint laugh. _“He'll be fine, but he won't be up and about for another six hours at least. I honestly have no idea of how he kept himself going during that fight, to say nothing of helping with the cleanup! He should not have been made to fight, Allura, not with even the slightest residue of Hoshinthra venom left in him, and he was almost completely exhausted when Lance brought him up to the kitchen. Sleep is what he needs most right now, and Modhri made sure that he would get it.”_

Allura nodded, satisfied. “Good enough. Once everyone is up and ready, we must see about repairing the Castle and rejoining the Fleet.”

“ _An excellent idea,”_ Lizenne agreed. _“It's a pretty planet, but enough is enough, and I need to reclaim the_ Chimera _before some busybody tries to salvage it.”_

 

“Bad Castle!” Hunk said sternly, waving a finger at Coran's console. “Bad, bad Castle! We could have avoided this whole stupid drama if you hadn't decided to sit there sucking your thumb, just because you got an owwie and your daddy wasn't here to kiss it and make it all better!”

“Hunk...” Shiro said, rubbing at his eyes. He was feeling considerably refreshed, but watching his teammate scold a flying skyscraper for childish behavior was still a bit much.

Hunk ignored him, propping his fists on his hips and glaring at the glittering controls. “Oh, no, don't you try to use that as an excuse. I did the math. If you'd let us fix you, we would have been in orbit by the time they showed up— _with_ the _Chimera_ as backup, I might add, and we would have kicked their shaggy butts and rescued all those people anyway. Modhri would have insisted, and you know it. But _no_ , you had to be a big baby about it, and now you've got a lot of extra dents and a pool room that still smells like Gantar-goop.”

“Hunk...” Keith sighed, rolling his eyes heavenward, “just fix the ship, will you?”

Hunk ignored him, too. “That's right, and you're not gonna give us any more trouble, now or later, or I'm gonna spray you pink and change your registration plate to read ' _Castle Whiny-Pants',_ all right? I can do it, I can build an airbrush that big. I can build nine of them with the stuff in the storage rooms, and that's after I patch up your thin little skin, got it?”

“Hunk...” Allura said, experiencing the odd sensation of that flying skyscraper trying to cringe in shame.

“Don't bother, guys,” Pidge said, watching with interest. “Hunk's unstoppable when he's got that mulish look on his face.”

Coran chuckled, tugging on his mustache. “Especially when it's working. My grandfather's creations did occasionally need a good shouting-at, being a bit temperamental now and again. Why, you should have heard the tirade that my own father gave one of his starbases! Fair blistered the hullplates, so he did, and the recordings of that dressing-down were transcribed, copied, and distributed to every drill sergeant in the Altean military training camps as an inspirational piece! Worked like a charm, too. You never saw such well-behaved trainees after that. Or such well-behaved starcraft.”

“--And what about you?” Hunk continued angrily. “Shut down like an old TV set with the cord pulled. They were probably going to take you apart, you know, and then install a barbecue house in what was left. Their hottest menu item would've been baby-back ribs from real babies, pal, and you know it! We've actually got a baby on board to prove it! _And_ the Lions! What about the Lions? They got shut down too because of your temper tantrum, and we really needed them out there. What do you think would have happened to them if those death spiders had gotten hold of them, huh? Not that they'd let a Gantar fly them, but they were helpless, they couldn't even get their shields up, and those monsters would have taken them apart. Gantars are good at taking things apart, man, and they would have Franken-fixed their bits to their ships and gone off to eat whole populations. You might've handed them the galaxy on a plate, and not in the good way! Way to blow off your responsibilities, dude.”

Lance smirked, listening to Hunk's angry speech with the air of a connoisseur. “You don't know the half of it. There was a guy down the block where we lived who collected antique cars, and he promised us all a ride to the beach in his genuine, fully-restored, candy-apple red '57 Chevy. Totally a classic, and the whole neighborhood was in love with it, but it wouldn't always start when he wanted it to. It conked out right there in the driveway, and then Hunk—he was ten when this happened—cussed it out for ruining the trip. That car never failed to start on command ever again.”

“--And let that be a lesson,” Hunk finished up, and glanced back at his team. “Okay, guys, we can work on it now.”

“I should say so,” Allura said, noting that if the Castle had been a flesh-and-blood person, it would be crying for its mother right about now. “All right, everyone, are we ready?”

Shiro glanced around at the others. “Let's get to it.”

They had decided to tackle this project as a team, rather than leave it entirely to Hunk and Pidge, thinking that they might be able to share the load a little better, and perhaps even learn something from it. Hunk placed his hands on the console and closed his eyes, extending his sixth sense into the fabric of the Castle itself. He could feel everything like it was his own skin now, in many ways similar to Clarence and Jasca, and at the same time very different. Magic and technology had been blended into one cohesive whole in many parts of the ship, the heart and soul of it hanging above his head in the form of the Balmeran crystal. He smiled. That stone was warm and familiar to him, having come from a planet and people that he counted as great friends. He could feel the people aboard the ship as well; bright, busy lifesigns, mostly concentrated around the residential levels and the lounge. Zaianne and the dragons were down there too, keeping the peace and... yeah, and playing cards. It was just as well that he'd made extra cookies a couple of days ago. He felt his team at his back, all of them ready to help where they could, and he crooked a mental finger at Pidge and Allura.

_I'm going to have a look at the damage now,_ he told them,  _I'm better at structural stuff—tell me if I start messing up any of the software or magic._

_We will,_ they replied.

The damage went deep. Six levels had been compromised by the initial blast alone, and the trip down through the planet's atmosphere had put huge strains on the entire structure. The surface they had landed on wasn't particularly level or smooth either, and the damaged structural members were feeling the imbalance as well. The explosive decompression on the pool deck had caused worse damage than freezing the pool, the deck itself had buckled a bit from the impact of the falling ice, and countless small but very important connections and utilities had been disrupted.

_Wow, what a mess,_ Lance said.

_Yeah,_ Keith replied,  _let's try to keep those guys out of the house from now on, all right?_

_And learn to dodge,_ Pidge humphed.  _Lotor's souped up his guns, and those Ghamparva ships are nasty. Feel that? Keeping the particle barrier up gave the power core a real pounding, and I think that something broke when the barrier failed._

_You're right,_ Allura said, wincing at the damage in the generator.  _Some of the control crystals feel cracked. That's not good. I don't know if we have any replacements._

_We'll make do,_ Shiro said quietly.  _How did you want to go about doing this, Hunk?_

Hunk hummed under his breath, senses tingling as he got a feel for the unique systems all around him. _Not like Clarence. Not like Jasca either. Those two were just machines before we plugged in the AI's. He's a little like the_ Chimera, _though, and more like the Lions. He was alive from the start, like they are. Yeah. I'm gonna need all of you in on this one. Link up with me—Lance, you'll want to watch the pipes and help me heal the damage. Pidge, you watch the nerves—that's his electronics and stuff. Allura, help her with the aetheric bits and keep us powered up and hooked into the systems, I'm pretty sure that Castle will let you draw from his core. Keith, you'll keep an eye on that, and clean up what needs cleaning up, like dust on the circuits. Modhri's done his best, but there's no way that he could have gotten everything. Shiro..._

_Yes?_ Shiro smiled wryly, having no idea how his own budding gift would fit into this work.

Hunk shrugged and smiled at him. _Just keep an eye on us and tell us if you get any feelings, like if we're doing something wrong. Or teach Castle how to get hunches. Whatever._

Shiro snorted in amusement. _I'll do my best._

Linking up took no effort at all. Their powers came from the same source that their Lion's did, and elements, even very powerful elements, were in the end only parts of a whole. It is in the nature of parts to seek wholeness, and each aura snapped into place like the pieces of a puzzle, and the wheel began to turn unbidden within them.

_\--:empower/ramify/strengthen/purify/heal/foresee:--_

That last element came as a surprise, but not an unpleasant one; indeed, they realized that they had been incomplete all along. It only made sense; using such power was senseless and useless if one couldn't plan what to do with it. They felt Shiro gasp as his aura anchored itself firmly into the array, and they glimpsed the true depth of him for the first time.

_We'll have to do this again later, in a circle-session,_ Allura said faintly, fighting the temptation to abandon their project in favor of exploring those depths.  _After we're safely offworld, team._

_Yeah, yeah, sorry,_ Hunk said, pulling on the bond to get the others' attention. _Come on, guys, we've got a responsibility._

That was enough to focus them on the work again, and that, at least, went smoothly enough. The Castle, mortified by its bad behavior, allowed Allura to draw up power from the core to feed their own, and dropped its defenses to permit the repairs to be made, Keith acting with her to balance the load on that system. Sunk in his rapport with the fabric of the ship itself, Hunk reached for the shuttle-pod deck, where the spare sections of hullplate lay waiting in dusty storerooms. It was too much of a bother to have the drones take the plates outside and raise them to the right height, so he simply absorbed a few stacks and sent their substance to where they were needed, like ripples through a pool. Lance understood that concept very well and fielded what came to him with ease, shaping new pipes to the pattern that Hunk gave him, Pidge working around the both of them to essentially regrow what had been lost. Dents and tears healed. Cracked crystals became whole. Control mechanisms came back into alignment. Fatigue and strain were eased. Fouled areas were cleansed. Computer glitches were sorted out. Leaky pipes mended themselves. Suggestions for improvements were made, and acted upon. Nothing big, just little tweaks here and there to enhance this function or that. Coran's grandfather had been an artist and a master architect, that was true, but even he hadn't had the kind of advantages that their team did. The Castle was whole again, and more than whole, but the team was reluctant to stop. It felt so good, so  _right_ to be as one! There was nothing that they couldn't do, nothing that they couldn't fix, and the universe was so wide and promising...

Throughout all of this, the Lions had watched, waiting, approval radiating from them, and moved to catch that wheel of spinning energies now that the work was done. The Paladins were aware of being held, turning in perfect balance between them for a long, euphoric moment, slowing and coming to rest in that safe containment. At a suggestion from the black Lion, Allura fed the excess energy back into the Castle's core, replenishing what had been taken, allowing them to open their eyes upon the physical plane without difficulty.

Shiro smiled at her. “Nice landing.”

“Thank you,” she said, a little breathlessly. “We almost lost ourselves for a moment, there.”

Keith puffed a laugh and wiped at his face, which was a little damp, but not overly so. “The Lions acted as a brake. We'll have to watch that in the future. How do things look, Coran?”

Coran had had no way of seeing what had passed between the Paladins, but he had felt the peculiar movements in the substance of the ship right under his feet, and had backed a safe distance away. “Well, if you'll clear off of the console, I might be able to get a good look.”

They stepped away, grunting and stretching, but they felt surprisingly good after so big an effort. “Huh,” Lance said thoughtfully. “How come we're not exhausted and starving? I mean, I could do with a snack, but I feel fine.”

Allura hummed, glancing up at the crystal over the pilot's dais, which didn't look any different from its normal glossy, multifaceted appearance. “I'm not sure. We drew power from the ship, but I'm sure that I gave most of that back. Coran?”

Coran looked up from running diagnostics, his expression pensive. “As far as I can tell, you were all doing something very unusual, Paladins. You were acting as a true Synergy—being more than the sum of your parts. That's rare. I mean, extremely rare. To do that, every member of a group has to mesh perfectly with each other, and their talents have to be at equal strength, and completely compatible. There have been a few of those in Altean history, yeah, but only a few. Only one of 'em was mentioned within recorded history; the other three were a legend, a fairy tale, and, arguably, the Ones Who created Altea in the first place.”

Lance stared at him. “Seriously? Like gods?”

Coran waggled a hand dismissively. “Well, not precisely. The Ancients were credited with all sorts of miraculous things. It's said that they created our homeworld from a lot of loose space junk, poured in an ocean or two, added an atmosphere and a good strong magnetic field, and then dropped in a nice lush biosphere. After that, well, things get a little odd. Legend has it that the precursors of our people were brought in from  _somewhere else,_ although no one knows where that was or why the move was made. We're pretty sure that it did happen, though. We found part of the bucket.”

“The... bucket,” Hunk said in a flat voice. “What bucket?”

“The one they used for pouring out the oceans, of course,” Coran said, tapping at a control. “It was a really _big_ bucket. Our explorers found it drifting out beyond the orbit of the outermost planet in our system, half a handle and a pretty large section of the rim. Looked as though it had been used hard, though. I think someone calculated out just how many bucketloads it would have taken to fill up our oceans, but I can't remember how many trips the thing was thought to have made before it broke. I'll look it up for you, if you like.”

Shiro heaved a sigh and rubbed at his face, as always unsure whether to take Coran's stories seriously. “Maybe later, Coran. Can we lift off safely?”

Coran brightened up somewhat. “Yes, actually. The diagnostics are coming up clean, the external sensors report the breach to be healed, and the pool is refilling as we speak. Very nice work, all of you.”

Pidge smiled in satisfaction. “Thanks. He'll also be more responsive, faster, and a little more energy-efficient. Want to go and see if there are any of those knozwhack dumplings left, guys?”

Allura leaped up onto the pilot's dais. “Not just yet. I want us off of this planet and well away before any more Gantarash show up, or Lotor again, for that matter. Is everyone still inside, Coran?”

“They are indeed, Princess,” Coran replied cheerfully. “None of the hatches have been disturbed since your return, and the personnel count tallies up properly.”

“Begin launch sequence,” she commanded, looking hungrily up at the sky.

“Initiating launch sequence now,” Coran responded, and a deep, powerful thrum became perceptible through the floorplates. “Core's holding well... thrusters are firing... all systems go.”

The Castle lifted on a pillar of brilliance, and everybody smiled to see the planet dropping away at last. From this height, they could see the old landing yard by the palace, with its eighteen wrecked Gantarash ships. Keith scratched thoughtfully at his chin. “Didn't Mom want to blow those things up?”

Pidge opened her mouth to reply, but saw something happening down there that stopped her before she could speak. Gulping, she managed, “I... I don't think that'll be necessary, Keith.”

Great woody things, like vines or huge roots, had come out of the surrounding forest, which was rippling and tossing like ocean waves. These wound around the ruined ships, toppling them and dragging them slowly into the depths. A few of the ships cracked open on impact and burst into greenish flame, causing the vines nearest them to split, spewing huge clots of something pale and puffy that clumped over the stricken craft like cauliflower, snuffing out the fires.

“By the Ancients,” Allura whispered.

“How did it learn to do _that?”_ Lance demanded. “I mean, I know that it learned some stuff from us, and-and-and I know how to get cucumber vines to grow up a trellis and all that, but what the _quiznek_ is going on down there?”

Shiro swallowed hard. “That may have come from me. I grew up watching anime, and some of those did have aggressive growths like that in them.”

“Or me,” Pidge said in a small voice. “Shechethra and I can do that, remember.”

Hunk shivered. “Yeah, and I had to do a report on carnivorous plants in middle school. Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, sundews, bladderworts, and some other things. They're kind of neat, but not if you're a bug.”

The last ship was being dragged into the trees now, and there was no sign that its mates had been there at all.

Keith bared his teeth at the disturbing scene. “I don't think that we should come back here again, Allura. I know that anyone who does land there won't be able to leave.”

Allura nodded and turned the Castle to face the stars. “We'll tell the Coalition, and they will spread the warning.”

The Castle seemed to agree that this solar system was no longer inclined to welcome them, and blue skies soon deepened into the star-washed black of space. As soon as they had reached a safe distance, Coran set the coordinates for the nearest solar system, Allura opened a wormhole, and they were gone.

 

The _Chimera_ was waiting for them there, having prudently hidden itself in the thickest part of an asteroid belt, and it answered their hail instantly. _“No further attempts at pursuit, capture or boarding,”_ it told them calmly. _“Sensors report some activity further in toward the star; signatures indicate both Gantarash and Galra scouts. It is recommended that we leave promptly.”_

“No argument there, dear,” Lizenne replied; she had been called to the bridge to help locate her ship, and had done so with ease. “Follow us, if you would, to somewhere safer. Modhri and I will take the helm once we are sure that we won't be interrupted. Ah. A status report on the yulpadi in the envirodeck, please?”

The _Chimera_ paused briefly; a screen popped up, showing the peculiar but lovely inside-out world of the envirodeck, the view dominated by a large and very strange-looking creature. _“The yulpadi is mature, fit, and healthy. Behavior patterns normal. Grass and herb consumption has increased slightly; scatological readings show a moderate hormone elevation consistent with approaching breeding season. All other envirodeck readings are within acceptable limits. No damage or malfunction present in the rest of the ship.”_

Lizenne gave her ship a satisfied smile. “Thank you, _Chimera,_ and well done.” She cocked an eyebrow at the Paladins, who were looking at the yulpadi with expressions that ranged from speculation to open appetite. “We will probably be hunting and gathering in there fairly soon as a family group, time permitting. The dragons will insist.”

“ _Noted,”_ the _Chimera_ replied, sounding interested. _“Accommodations will be made ready. Please warn me at least twelve hours prior to the event, Pilot Lizenne; weather patterns corresponding to the parent planet's environment and season promote frequent rainstorms. I do not think that you would enjoy hunting the yulpadi in a downpour.”_

Lizenne puffed a laugh. “No, we would not. I will give you plenty of advance warning, and thank you again.”

“ _You are welcome, Pilot Lizenne. Lead on.”_

“Handy, that,” Coran observed perhaps a touch wistfully. “I'm a little envious, actually. The Castle's hologram suite is a pleasant spot to relax in, but it's pretty much all that we've got left of Altea, aside from a few potted plants. It's quite another matter to have a slice of the real thing.”

“Yes,” Lizenne murmured. “It's absolutely necessary for me and mine, and well worth the trouble and expense of maintaining it. Allura, stop salivating and fly the ship, I promise that we'll hunt soon.”

There was a slightly embarrassed giggle from the pilot's dais. “Sorry. Perhaps we should go and get some lunch in a little time. Coran, if you would lay in a course for the Gems of Iltireen, please?”

“Certainly, Princess,” Coran said, doing just that.

Shiro looked around at his teammates, who were still staring at the _Chimera_ with hungry eyes. “I take it that those taste good?” he asked.

Hunk let out a long, yearning sigh. “Shiro, you have no idea. Yulpadi stew is the platonic ideal of all things souplike. I want to try making burgers out of it this time. Hey, Lizenne, how well does yulpadi meat take to being ground up and pan-fried?”

“It doesn't,” she replied. “Oh, you could, but you'd poison everybody within three miles of the Castle. Raw yulpadi meat is unbelievably toxic to everything but its natural predators. That's why I told you never to fiddle with the recipe—all of those spices, herbs, vegetables, and roots carry chemical compounds that, when combined and cooked properly, will turn that lethal pile of odd protiens into the stew you love so much. Anything else might kill you.”

Hunk deflated with a disappointed moan.

Lizenne chuckled. “Oh, come now, your people make a great production of eating fish that produce lethal nerve toxins. Would you make tacos out of those? There are all sorts of vegetables on your planet that are toxic unless prepared in just the right way, and a number of your most common crops have only one nonpoisonous part. Why should Zampedri be any different?”

“Or Altea, for that matter,” Coran cut in as the two ships headed into the watery blue circle of the wormhole. “Quite a lot of our cuisine was dangerous in the raw state, and it took some work to make it palatable. My particular favorite was Ecquolipukt-style huloptiquen blophee. Took a solid decaphebe to make, since the pickled pullorq needed to ferment underground in big stoneware jars—unglazed, had to be unglazed jars or it would spoil—for precisely two hundred and eighty-four and three-quarters quintents. You could always tell that the pullorq was ready by the way it bashed its way out of the jar and started menacing small animals, and you had to hit it very hard with a stick to get it to hold still long enough to mix into the batter. Hmm, and the stick had to be a three-foot length of freshly cut and peeled sommolic wood, and from a bush no older than four decaphebes. Very important, that. And then—eek!”

Lizenne had caught him by the ear, as she often did when he got carried away. “Nonsense. Sommolic wood would have made it inedibly sweet. Mother's cook used to swear by six-year-old auphrast wood, when she wasn't swearing at it, anyway. Grabby things, aren't they? We had one in the garden for a while, but my Matriarch had it uprooted and burned when it tried to throttle an important guest. Not an easy task, that. It was a mature bush.”

“Ooh, yeah, they can get pretty nasty when threatened,” Coran said, and then blinked, turning to face her with his mustache bristling in indignation. “And where did your mother get that bush, or the cook, might I ask?”

“I've been wondering about that myself, actually,” Allura added, bringing the Castle and the _Chimera_ back out into realspace a careful distance from a fearsome blue star. “Why would Zarkon and Haggar permit anyone to leave Quolothis?”

Lizenne frowned darkly and took a couple of steps away from Coran's console. “Moron management.”

“Excuse me?” Coran yelped in outrage.

Allura was no less upset. “I hope you've got an explanation for that!”

“Oh, yes. It's what my grandfather called it.” Lizenne turned her scowl on the stars. “Zarkon might be the ultimate authority in the Empire, but he still has to make sure that the High Houses will do what they are told. Mostly, he will simply annihilate any fool that annoys him regardless of rank, but sometimes, just sometimes, he will hand out rewards for exceptional service. There was a fashion in Grandfather's day for the High Houses to keep rare peoples as pets and servants, and the rarer they were, the more highly-prized. It was a way to distract a multitude of people who were experts at intrigue from plotting against the Throne. Those were the morons, Allura. They were very skilled at political maneuvering and power plays, skilled enough to make things difficult even for the Emperor if they wished, but they were worthless at doing anything else. Doling out the occasional prize kept them manageable. Great-Grandfather Karoc had managed to please Zarkon enough to get an Altean woman as a reward, although he had no practical use for the poor lady whatsoever. He gave her to Mother as a birthday present, in much the same way that another child might receive a graal-kitten. Mother was kind to her, I'm pleased to say, and I'm fairly sure that Therrin was content with her place in our House, but no one ever quite forgot that she was property. I and my brothers were very sad when she died, and we made sure that she got a decent burial in the prettiest part of the gardens.”

“That's wrong,” Lance blurted angrily. “You just put her in the garden, like a dead hamster, or a goldfish? She wasn't a pet, she was a person!”

Lizenne shrugged. “Lance, dear, you know that and I knew that, but my family didn't give a damn. If my brothers and I hadn't made a fuss about it, she would have gone into the incinerators with the rest of the household trash. The resulting argument with the gardeners was what got me thinking that enslaving other people was wrong. They considered her body, which had only just recently housed a delightful old lady, a teacher, a confidant, and a great friend, to be no better than a heap of dubious mulch. I wouldn't have it, and I made it very clear that she would be treated with respect, or else. If it makes you feel better, I planted the grave with juniberry flowers so that she wouldn't be too far from home.”

Allura stared at her, tears running unheeded down her face. “That was... that was very kind of you. How did you get juniberries? Or auphrast nuts?”

Lizenne flicked her a sly smile. “Therrin was an avid gardener as well as a good cook. She might have been torn from home and family, but she had somehow managed to smuggle a pouch of seeds through the checkpoints, essentially bringing a part of Quolothis with her. Mother permitted her a portion of one of the private gardens to play with; she used to boast that she had blooms that no other House in the Empire could produce, and her bouquets, perfumes, and dried flower arrangements were highly prized by her friends and rivals alike. I'll see if I can get you a sampling of seeds when we take Tzairona home.”

“That would be very kind of you,” Coran said quietly. “The Castle's hydroponics section had some juniberries, but they didn't survive our ten-thousand-year nap. The stasis jars holding the seeds failed, you see. We lost quite a lot.”

“I will see to it,” Lizenne replied gravely. “In the meantime, should I go and fetch Zaianne? She knows more about this end of space than either you or I do.”

Allura wiped at her eyes and turned her gaze to the unfamiliar stars. “Please do. We are very late in returning to the Fleet.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has read this fic and shown us love in any form, whether it be kudos, encouragements, questions, or even just pretty emoticons. We hope to see you again next story! And if anyone has an interesting word ending in -ology, feel free to share and possibly keep Spanch and I from going insane trying to find just the right word. ^_^
> 
> (Also, extra cookies to the people who guess what Lance is plotting with the merchant prince. Hint: Xelocia was mentioned in Piratology.)

**Author's Note:**

> A little conversation between me and Spanch while writing these stories:
> 
> Spanch: Maybe we should give Keith a growth spurt soon...  
> Kokochan: But...I love Smol Keith.  
> Spanch: It's in his genes, though.  
> Kokochan: I want to keep my hug-sized Galra! LET ME HAVE THIS!!!  
> Dreamworks: Here's Season 6, everyone! Look, Keith got taller!  
> Kokochan: *weeps*
> 
> Comments and Kudos, as always, are the nectar of the gods for us crazed writers. If you feed us, miracles happen.


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